News of the News

SOYLENT GREY, London EC1, Monday (NNN) — The Organ Donation Taskforce has delivered its report to the Department of Health, recommending presumed consent and an opt-out system for organ donations, particularly from surplus bankers.

The “Banks for Banks” initiative was launched with tremendous fanfare today as a group of newly-redundant Lehman Brothers employees proceeded to tear their bosses limb from limb. The ice for the champagne proved adequate to the task of preserving the bodily parts until they could be taken to a hospital and scanned for sexually transmissible infections, cocaine-induced septicaemia and mad cow disease.

Transplant surgeons have long lamented the non-opening windows at Canary Wharf, which would have tremendously helped the nation’s organ banks as well as the post-collapse job market.

Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson praised the tremendous progress Department of Health researchers had made in reprocessing City bankers into something actually useful to humanity. “London will never again want for speed humps, shooting targets or anus transplants.”

A law will be passed that City traders who opt out from the European Working Time Directive will be presumed to have consented to being rendered down. “After a few weeks of that you’re the walking dead anyway.”

Chancellor Alistair Darling promised to safeguard the jobs of 1,500 Bradford & Bingley mortgage staff for six months after the nationalisation of the bank’s lending business, at which point almost all of them started arranging to emigrate.

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SECURITY EIGHTPLEX, Whitehall Odeon, Monday (NNN) — Prime Minister Gordon Brown has hailed the launch of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety as a “path-breaking” new diversion designed to protect the most vulnerable members of society: “The politicians.”

He said, “The internet provides a world of entertainment, of opportunity and knowledge, but, most importantly, distraction. We must put in place the press campaign we need to appear to be keeping our children safe online. Scientists have proven that paedophilia did not exist before the Internet, and was invented by Gary Glitter as the result of a ‘Rule 34’ jest.”

The Council was formed based on recommendations from television psychologist Dr Tanya Byron’s report Gi’s A Consultancy Go On Gi’s It. It will police the web, take down harmful sites — since all web servers are under UK jurisdiction — and monitor the Wikipedia entries of Government ministers. UK-based web hosts will be made an offer they cannot refuse to sign up to a voluntary code of conduct. Reports of hosting providers in other countries gleefully rubbing their hands together are unconfirmed.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the Home Office would do everything it could to present the appearance of effectiveness. “This is not mere ‘security theatre.’ We are aiming for ‘security 3-D movies with fantastic CGI special effects.’ And a ‘security Punch and Judy show’ for the little ones. We can prevent bullying! And people being rude in chat rooms! And bum jokes! Our consultants, EDS Capita Goatse, have made us a most reasonable offer to take on this work, and only charged us £500,000 so far for thinking about the matter.”

Dr Byron welcomed the prompt creation of the Council. “The UK is a world leader on internet safety for children, and I look forward to collecting a truly spectacular ongoing income stream.”

The Prime Minister will be kept directly informed of the Council’s progress, using the same technology that provides Internet petitions to his office. He further promises to pay every bit as much attention.

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BELTWAY, Liberty City, Sunday (NNN) — The new Wall Street Wars version of controversial video game Grand Theft Auto will let players deal sub-prime mortgages to earn in-game cash.

GTA: Wall Street is a significant advance in game technology, bringing the famous Red Ring Of Death to Microsoft Excel and thus giving PC gamers the advantages long enjoyed by Xbox 360 gamers.

In the end game, being run as a Live Multiplayer Weekend from Friday through to tomorrow, the final “boss” is the US Treasury. Defeating this character depends on the player’s posse putting enough game points into play to crash the whole game if they are killed. Success earns the player and his team a 700 billion point bonus.

Controversy surrounds a download available on the net called “Hot Latte,” which is said to unlock secret insider trading scenes. However, the final edition of the game is unlikely to feature explicit criminality, sticking only to the socially-sanctioned variety.

Dan Houser, chief of game developer Rockstar, said: “Our games are intended as entertainment and relaxation for mature adults, not children. GARÇON! MORE COKE AND HOOKERS OVER HERE! CHOP CHOP, S’IL VOUS PLAÎT MATE! We are of course very happy to continue to work with all responsible bodies on these matters, as previously.” He then proceeded to snort an entire gram in one hit.

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LAGOS, Surrey, Friday (NNN) — Email filtering company MessageLabs reports that Egham, Surrey, on the suburban outskirts of London, is the town that receives the most spam in Britain.

“It’s not like there’s much else to do,” said Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of Egham Hythe, idly whirling his four-foot penis around his head in a desultory fashion. “Expanding your manhood, growing your breasts, increasing your sperm … the Lib Dem phone calls get a bit much. That’s Doctor Busybody, by the way. My Ph.D arrived last week.”

Spam has revitalised the local economy. Busybody has given up cab driving and is now working a lucrative job processing payments from home after he sent them his bank details in response to an urgent security message. “I had that King Otumfuo Opoku Ware II in the back of my cab once. Very generous and helpful fellow.”

The Egham Tourist Board has seized the day, with plans for a 50 foot tall penis sculpture at Junction 13 of the M25 on the exit ramp to the town. The sculpture will be encircled by a genuine imitation Rolex and spray a fountain of Spermamax, obtained at a very reasonable rate from a Canadian pharmacy. “You will search an hour for your underwear in the ocean of our spam!” is to become the new town motto.

“I did get a good one the other day,” says Busybody. “Barrister Matthew Sergeant Busybody of MessageLabs said we could promote our town to millions of people just by sending them an advance fee to process our incoming email. The stuff they try! ’Scuse me, V!k@grk@ kicking in, got to go have sex again. Sorry.”

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DEPARTMENT OF CONTRACTING, Pfi, Thursday (NNN) — The Home Office today unveiled the new British identity card, to be issued to non-EU citizens in place of visas. “This is vitally important,” said the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith. “LOOK! TERRORISTS!”

The card bears the subject’s picture, name, date of birth, visa status, working status, place of birth, gender, mother’s maiden name, favourite TV show and football team and preferences in pornography. The biometric details will be the subject’s middle fingerprints. An RFID transponder and smart card chip will aid in the efficient reading and distribution of the subject’s details.

The card will be compulsory for foreign nationals. All terrorists and illegal immigrants will be required to obtain one and show it to policemen, council officials or dog catchers on request. From 2009, cards will be issued to new workers at airports, as forcing them upon existing staff may cause everyone to quit.

“The card evokes the fundamentally British nature of identity cards,” said Ms Smith, “as shown by the EU load of bull and stars and the absence of the words ‘Britain,’ ‘United Kingdom’ or similar. It’s the first UK identity card since the Second World War, so will help us all pull together in that jolly good old Blitz spirit.”

“We wholeheartedly support this move, for the good of Britain,” said Nick Hitler (no relation) of the British National Party. Reports that the BNP had put out a bounty on a “lost” data disk listing the names and addresses of every immigrant in the country are unconfirmed.

Ministers hope to roll out the scheme to everyone in the country by 2011, since they do not anticipate being summarily ejected from Parliament in the 2010 elections. In any case, EDS and Capita will still be paid.

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MENEZES, Stockwell, Thursday (NNN) — Complaints of police rudeness and impoliteness have risen 25% in the last year, the Independent Police Complaints Commission says.

Others complain of police refusing to accept that a crime has been committed. “The bounder failed to doff his cap or call me by my full title,” said arrogant over-monied young twat Otis Ferry, 25. “He even threatened me with a charge of ‘wasting police time’ when I insisted he report his own atrociously oikish behaviour to his knighted superior! I blame the socialists in power.”

Figures released earlier this year showed police carried out 955,000 stop-and-searches in 2006/07, up 9%. Black people are seven times more likely to be stopped as white people. “Brown ones should just stay inside and keep away from tube stations,” said commissioner Sir Ian Blair, “particularly if they’re in the force themselves.”

The Met said it welcomed complaints. “On slow nights we make paper planes from them, cover them in hairspray, set them alight and launch them from the roof,” said Sir Ian.

“They should save their rudeness for those Johnny Foreigners with their new Johnny Foreigner ID cards,” said Brenda Busybody, 77 (IQ), of East Cheam, “not decent British folk like us. I pay my licence fee!”

In better news, reported crimes are down 25% on last year yet again, this apparently being in no way connected to closed police stations or point-blank refusals by police to accept that the bleeding person limping in with torn clothes and no money is a victim of crime rather than, e.g., a random vagrant just after a warm cell for the night.

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DAS BUNKER, British Phonographic Industry, Wednesday (NNGadget) — Sony-Ericsson has announced PlayNow Plus, a new plan for unlimited “DRM-free” music downloads on phones.

“Pay, er, PlayNow Plus is completely unlimited, covers all major labels, no DRM, get all you want any time you like,” said spokesdrone Mobile Salestwat. “This is the biggest deal in mobile music ever! Of course, it’ll only play on your phone, for the duration of the contract, all songs then disappearing. Well, just a little DRM. Honest.”

Nokia was quick to strike back. “Our Comes With Music plan is a simple, compelling user experience with first class music-enabled devices, and really doesn’t have any DRM at all, unlike those rapacious Sony bastards,” said spokesdrone Mobile Salestwat. “We pay you to take the songs! And you keep all of them! Forever! Until the end of the contract. And you can play them on your phone and your computer! Through the Nokia software. So only a wafer-thin piece of DRM. Hardly any.”

“Our plan is so much better,” said Sony. “Songs from our service randomly come up to you offering you CASH CASH CASH, a lovely fruit basket, a backrub and a blowjob. The rootkit our software installs on your computer, which crashes it once an hour and records everything you do for our marketing department and sends a gigabyte a day of Nigerian spam, is for your comfort and convenience. And absolutely no DRM. We prefer the term digital consumer enhancement.”

“Your plan’s mother was a pigdog!” said Nokia. “Have you ever tried using an Ericsson phone? Worst. Interface. Ever. Our plan beams the entire catalogues of all six, er, five, I mean four major labels, plus the complete works of the remaining Hollywood studios, directly into your brain’s pleasure centre! And also gives you huge and spectacular breasts! Or penis! Or both! And your little dog too! It does burn out chunks of your cerebral cortex when your contract ends, for the protection of the artists and the continued development of musical culture. So you might want to be sure you’re on time with your upgrade. But it’s not DRM. As such.”

Both services offer approximately five million songs, though 98% of downloads to date have been of the track “Bloody Irritating Piece Of Synthetic R&B” by MC Sewermouth, purchased on stolen phones and played at top volume by those teenagers in the back seat of the bus.

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THE LAB, Borg Cube, Tuesday (NotScientist) — Dedicated Monsanto geneticists, working for the good of humanity and a badly-written space filler in the newspapers, have produced a fabulous array of valuable new cash crops with 100% all-natural artificial flavors that developing countries can grow to pay the interest on their ludicrous debts to the International Monetary Fund.

“Bananas that taste like banana flavoring!” said Cylon Number Six of Monsanto Public Relations. “Strawberries that taste like strawberry flavoring! Brewed coffee that tastes like instant! I was really disappointed the time I ate a strawberry as a kid, it didn’t taste anything like strawberry flavor. Now your kids will never have to suffer the same way.”

The wholly natural artificial flavoring builds on examples from nature: bacon with the magical taste of bacon, Quorn with the magical taste of Quorn and Budweiser with the magical taste of urine. The latter example also produces urine with the magical taste of Budweiser.

Some flavors for specialist niches were not a success. “Ice cream that tastes like vanilla dental dams turned out too gritty for the lesbian market, probably because no-one actually uses them.” Authentic™ ManJuice™ chewing gum for the gay market was considered too “outré” at this time, as no-one could actually bring themselves to use the word “tasteless.”

The company looks forward to continuing to feed the world at very reasonable rates on heavily patented non-breeding seed. “Without us, the poor would starve. Starve, you hear? Naturally grown Big Macs with the magical taste of a New Jersey chemical vat will save the world. Anyone who hates Monsanto hates humanity and probably turns tortoises upside-down in the desert,” said Six, nibbling on a Red Dye No. 1 fruit fresh off the vine. “We do what we must because we can.”

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DEFINED FREEDOM, Gnuisance, Monday (NNGadget) — The Free Software Foundation (NASDAQ: RMS) has announced the Free Software alternative to the evil, DRM-infested, locked-down, defective-by-design iPhone: the GNUPhone.

The key technical innovation of the GNUPhone is that it is completely operated from the command line. “What could be more intuitive than a bash prompt?” said seventeen-year-old Debian developer Hiram Nerdboy. “The ultimate one-dimensional desktop! Just type dial voice +1-555-1212 –ntwk verizon –prot cdma2000 –ssh-version 2 -a -l -q -9 -b -k -K 14 -x and away you go! Simple and obvious!”

The phone will also serve as a versatile personal media player. “I can play any .au file or H.120 video with a single shell command! The iPod could never measure up to this powerful ease of use.” Video is rendered into ASCII art with aalib. “If blocky ASCII teletype softcore pinups were good enough for 1970s minicomputer operators, they’re good enough for you. Respect your elders.”

The KDE project will be bringing its next-generation KDE 4 desktop to the GNUPhone. “You can flip, twirl, dice, blend, fold, spindle and mutilate your terminal windows to your heart’s content,” said developer Aaron Seigo. “Look at that cool effect! Any complaint that basic functions don’t actually work is ignorant of the intrinsic beauty of the Plasma API and is just more FUD spread by haters like Stevie Ray Vaughan-Nichols and Novell Corporation.”

Actual successful voice calls are expected by 2011 to 2012. Regulatory approval is proving problematic in the corrupt, corporate-captured US environment. “The FCC said that if we dared switch on this, uh, ‘piece of shit’ in a built-up area in its present form, they’d break all our fingers with a fourteen-pound cluebat,” said Nerdboy. “They’re obviously shilling for Apple, Nokia and Microsoft.”

The second version of the GNUPhone will run EMACS on the HURD kernel and be operated by writing eLisp macros on the fly. “It’s the clearest, most elegant and natural operating environment anyone could conceive of,” said Nerdboy. “Really, we’re not out to destroy Apple; that will just be a completely unintentional side effect.”

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OUT WITH THE CHAPS, Hooray Club, Sunday (NNN) — Otis Ferry, son of singer Bryan Ferry, has been refused bail on charges of robbery, assault, perverting the course of justice and being an arrogant over-monied young twat.

His mother, former model Lucy Helmore, was worried that he was “without any clean socks and shirts” in prison, and that he will not be able to cope with confinement because he “loves the outdoors so much,” particularly the bits where foxes are ripped apart by dogs.

Mr Ferry was charged with assaulting a hunt monitor and stealing her camera and keys and threatening a prosecution witness on these charges, as well as being an arrogant over-monied young twat in general.

He has had visits from his equally talented and worthwhile friends Pixie Geldof, Jade Jagger, the Allen kids and one of the lesser McCartneys.

His mother added: “I think this whole thing has been politically motivated.” A spokesfox for the Metropolitan Red Fox Association called such claims of a fit-up “scurrilous” and denied allegations of a six-month surveillance operation by undercover urban foxes. “Is it ’cos I is red?” he added belligerently.

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PAGE 3, Channel 5, Friday (NNN) — Abi Titmuss has been flagged as the hot prospect for leader of the Labour Party in the leadup to the Annual Conference.

The party has searched for a suitable candidate who is actually ideologically distinguishable from any of New Labour. Ms Titmuss’ cheeky grin and cheerful attitude are expected to resonate with voters, as are her breasts. She is also considered ideal for a job whose expected term is about fifteen minutes.

“As long as you can ’ave a larf, innit,” said the future Prime Minister and former nurse, television host, author, actress and woman foolish enough to have shagged John Leslie.

Should her 2010 bid for re-election fail, she is expected to run for Mayor of London in 2012, getting more magazine coverage than even Ken Livingstone managed. “Boris is still a bigger tit, though.”

Nuts is expected to replace The Sun as the official UK governmental journal of record. Gordon Brown’s name will also be legally changed by party vote to Gordon Arsemess.

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CUPERTINO, Transylvania, Friday — After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with iTunes in the far future and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil™ as a corporate policy.

“Fuck it,” said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, “we’re evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You’ll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It’s shiny and it’s pretty and it’s cool and it works. It’s not like you’ll go back to a Windows Mobile phone. Ha! Ha!”

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. “Our evil is better than anyone’s evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where’s your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We’ve worked hard on our evil! Our Zune’s as evil as an iPod any day! I won’t let my kids use a lesser evil! We’re going to do an ad about that! I’ll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole.”

“Of course, we’re still not evil,” said Sergey Brin of Google. “You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it’s not like you’re going to use Windows Live Search. Ha! Ha! I’m sorry, that’s my ‘spreading good cheer’ laugh. Really.”

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MORDOR, RedMonk, Thursday (NNGadget) — The Microsoft Vista advertisements starring Bill Gates as Colonel Sanders and Jerry Seinfeld as a washed-up 1990s sitcom star have been terminated.

The ads are nevertheless anticipated to win many advertising industry awards and look good on the creators’ resumés. Vista has sold over 140 million copies worldwide, with many of those actually being installed and activated rather than replaced with XP.

“The idea of the ads was to get people talking,” said Waggener Edestrom marketing marketer Frank Shaw. “‘Vista: An operating system about nothing.’ The original plan was to work our way back through the comedic genius of history. Bob Hope, W.C. Fields, all the way back to Aristophanes. Ya rly.”

Shaw denied Microsoft was un-“hep” and not part of the “happening scene.” “I think the overwhelming computer press and blogosphere response demonstrates their total success. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, as we keep telling the client. Look at the huge successes of the antitrust trial and stacking ISO for OOXML. Everyone knows their name and what they’re about!”

Microsoft will be moving to “phase two” of the ads tomorrow. “They’ll be spectacular. Completely object-oriented, database file system, better security, no legacy stuff, WordPad, Paint.” The new commercials will use a comedic structure suggested by consultant Bill Hicks:

“Vista’s slow, it’s fat, my software doesn’t work, I can’t get drivers, the User Access Control’s a pain in the ass and my network grinds to a crawl when I play an mp3! What do you call that?”

“… The Aristocrats!”

Apple, Inc. shares were up 5% in early trading.

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THE FAERY CASTLE, Bournemouth, Wednesday (NNN) — Nick Clegg says the Liberal Democrats are on the way to power in his first conference speech as party leader.

“I can’t tell you every step on the road,” he said, taking a hit from his crack pipe, “but I can tell you where we’re headed: GOVERNMENT!”

He said they were the only party with “big, bold ideas for the country. New Labour is a zombie goverment and the Tories are arrogant. David Cameron is just a cuddly Tony Blair Lite hand puppet,” said the cuddly David Cameron Lite hand puppet.

The party had spent many hours debating the finer details of its “progressive and redistributive” tax package, just as if it had a hope in hell of implementing it.

“We must stay firm to Liberal Democrat values,” he said. “We must promise fluffy social liberalism whilst feathering our nests in every council and European Parliament seat we get. We can carry these values forward to Westminster.”

He also made a point of recommending stronger regulation of the banking sector, along with supporting the sky being blue and the sun rising in the east.

The Lib Dems have also come under fire over their plan to cold call 250,000 marginal voters with an automated message to get feedback on Mr Clegg’s key policy promises. “Calling people by voice robot at dinner time when Coronation Street is on will be the key way of getting people on our side and enhancing our public image,” he said. “I think the voters will be keen to show their appreciation.”

The party was in a better position than ever before, he said. “I have been to the Arctic and secured Father Christmas’ firm backing. With his support and that of the Easter Bunny and the contemporary militant Tooth Fairy jihadist movement, nothing is out of our reach. Join us now and feed the Liberals!”

A spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the good laugh had been most welcome.

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Guest post by Mary-Jo Enderle

BORG CUBE, RedMonk, Tuesday (NNGadget) — I have seen the future: Windows $NEXT_VERSION Milestone $MOCKUP.

I tried it on a low-end laptop with four Core 2 Duo chips and only 8 gig of memory, and trust me: $NEXT_VERSION is shaping up to be one heck of a product.

WordPad and Paint have seen major overhauls to their user interfaces. Forget the freetards and their “distros” full of all sorts of useless shovelware like “FireFox” and “OpenOffice” and, haha, “GIMP”! — the bundled software with Windows $NEXT_VERSION is clear, simple, sparse and to-the-point. The much-loved Ribbon user interface from Office 2007 is now part of WordPad and Paint!

The controversial Digital Rights Management system in Vista has been worked over, with user-downloadable “tilt bits,” which you can configure to your own liking. It’ll require every user to supply a blood sample for DNA analysis, and the beta nearly took my finger off, but of course that’s only if you want to play premium content. The Blu-Ray™ of Battlefield Earth was unbelievable on this operating system.

A public beta should be released by the end of this year. There’s just no way that Steve “Trains Run On Time” Ballmer will miss the Christmas deadline. The final release should leave the midnight queues on Vista release day — the street riots, the water cannons, the rubber bullets — in the shade.

I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they’re finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF.

Also, there’ll be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It’ll be awesome!

I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.

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THE HOUSING MARKET, Upstairs Flat Behind The Fish Renderer’s, Monday (NNN) — The house price crash has affected homes at all levels, says freelance itinerant labour force reservist Foul Ole Bob, of Cardboard City.

“My box was appreciating at ten thousand quid a week last year. Now it’s worth 50p. My life savings gone up in credit crunch!” said Bob. “Mister Foul, if you please, thank you.”

Jason Scum, of Wrongmove and Bastard, concurs. “I was selling looogshury boxes, seven foot by four foot, 150K this time last year. Sky dish and broadband fitted! All mod cons, luvverly neighbours, ex-cellunt views. A snip at 200K. You couldn’t spare a fiver for a line of coke, could you? I’m givin’ you my valuable time,” he said, waving his handful of Big Issue as random passing house owners threw what tomatoes they could spare at him.

After a decade-long housing boom, credit is all but unavailable. “Let’s just check yer Experian report … Failed to pay back little Johnny Turd that shilling in 1968? Ooh,” said ex-bank manager Dick Fold of Lehman Brothers, inhaling through his teeth, “’s gonna cost ya, guv. Not sure I can spare you that can of Super now, fag end or no.”

Overseas property sales in such highly desirable locations as North India, the Mongolian deserts and the Siberian tundra have also suffered, despite incredibly tempting Tube ads with four-colour photos of villas surrounded by trees. “I just don’t understand it,” said Scum, sucking from his bottle of meths.

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BODDY MANSION, Hill House, Thursday (NNGadget) — iTunes 8, released with the new iPods on Tuesday, causes Blue Screens of Death on Windows Vista. Apple and Microsoft enthusiasts quickly fell to heated message board discussion of which company was to blame — but equally quickly fingered the culprit.

“It’s Linux. Gotta be,” said Xbox Zune (name legally changed from Bill Softie). “It’s the only suspect that fits the facts!”

The Suspect, Weapon and Location cards revealed were Linux, in the Basement, with the Emacs Macro. But the motivation remained unclear.

“Yes, it was us,” said seventeen-year-old Debian maintainer Hiram Nerdboy. “And we’re proud.” A faint ammoniated cat piss odour came forth as Nerdboy ranted his confession. “Your effete desktops are a drain on the minds of millions! Mental resources they could use to learn simple tools like Lisp and Haskell! Is time actually cubical in nature? Your 3D desktops and games and shallow interfaces hide the true power, elegance and beauty of the command line! One Dimensional Desktop, with infinite compactified dimensions hidden inside like string theory — intuitive and obvious! I wrote an Emacs macro that plays one of my Ogg Vorbis sound files any time I like! How is iTunes easier than that? 4 simultaneous 24 hour Days within only 1 rotation of 4 quadrant Earth! Educated evil and stupid! LINUX SHALL TRIUMPH! … I’m sorry, I meant GNU/LINUX SHALL TRIUMPH! Sorry, Richard. Sorry. Sorry.”

“Geez, dude,” commented Mac user and first-day iPhone buyer Arty Phagge, “get a girlfriend. You’ll feel better,” he said, sipping his latte before his appointment to touch up his Apple logo tattoo.

In a completely unrelated incident, a red Converse-clad daemon and a blowfish, carrying a flag, were earlier seen leaving Apple’s Cupertino secure facility, snickering.

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DO-AS-YOU-PLEASE, Faraway Tree, Friday (NNN) — The Easter Bunny should be discussed in school science lessons rather than dismissed, says Professor Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society and of infiltration at the Discovery Institute.

“If pupils have strongly-held family beliefs about the Easter Bunny, such ideas should be explored,” he said. “Easterbunnyism, Fatherchristmasism or the contemporary militant Tooth Fairy jihadist movement are best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a world view. This is more valuable than simply banging on about ‘reality.’ Reality-based thinking is vastly overrated and certainly won’t prepare children for a career in the City or in government.”

Rev Prof Reiss, a biologist and Church of England minister, estimates that about one in 10 children is from a family which instructs its children in the Tooth Fairy theory of dentistry. “Obviously, these are from the stratum of society with more spare 50p pieces.”

Simon Underdown of Oxford Brookes University disagreed. “With so much to be crammed into science lessons, it is not a worthwhile use of time to include lessons on Easterbunnyism. We have monthly standardised testing to coach pupils on.”

The Royal Society quickly put out a statement affirming that it is opposed to such concepts being taught as science. Professor Richard Dawkins is working on a children’s text on useful ways to quickly construct street-corner gallows and burning stakes for rehabilitation of the religious.

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VARIETY, Lack Of, Friday (N! News) — A tight Karl Rove script makes a hit of the Mouse’s new dramedy Babe, a Fox co-production, helmed by Ron Howard and starring Britney Spears. It’s done whammo box office in the Bible Belt in its first two weeks, despite a panning from Gotham critics.

The fairy-tale pitch — a moose-shooting PTA hockey mom becomes President — is played slickly, with a pretty but tough heroine who starts in small-town Wasilla, Alaska and makes it to the top with down-home determination, religion and integrity intact.

Other stars include the chantoosie’s sister Jamie Lynn as the heroine’s daughter and Russian chopsocky hero Vlad Putin as the final villain.

The flick was greenlighted as a rush production by the GOP shingle prexy John McCain, expected to leave some time in the next four years, originally as second feature to so-so sequel Scrooge McBush. “Plot doesn’t matter. It’s all about heart.”

Babe opened big but rival distribs are dubious about its legs. “We don’t think it’ll even make it to November,” said Obamamania! studio DNC. “It can’t. Can it?”

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PAGE 3, Channel 5, Tuesday (N! News) — A-list Z-lister Danielle Lloyd, famous as that one who got kicked off Celeb Big Brother with Jade Goody and shagged them footballers and got her norks out and what was the other thing? has opened a leaked celebrity sex tape production consultancy.

“You have to make people care. Lighting, camera, sound, plot, distribution, publicity, not looking like some sort of tart, making sure you talk propah like …”

A recently leaked video shows Ms Lloyd naked, looking at and talking directly to a camera she was completely unaware of at the time. “That was never deliberate!” she said, speaking to the Daily Tits. “Phone cameras are rubbish. And that was two boob jobs ago. I just can’t believe anyone would stoop so low as to film me behind my back.” Ms Lloyd is “desperate” to stop the release of the tape to the Internet, which fans can help alert her to by comparing any alleged Lloyd nude footage to the samples available on daniellelloyd.com for £5.99 a download.

Ms Lloyd recently visited America, interviewing local official stalker candidates with the Daily Tits team and getting a “spiritual” tattoo down the back of her neck in Hebrew lettering reading “Idiot Gentile Bimbo.” She also got engaged to her boyfriend, DJ Sarcastik, and modelled her fabulous new diamond in several sets of thong bikini shots.

Ms Lloyd has also come out strongly against drugs. “They make you stupid, innit.” She recently appeared in her seventeenth celebrity nude calendar this year to support rehabilitation for chronic bottled tan snorters.

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