News of the News

The World Economic Forum in Davos is discussing a Cthulhu-led financial recovery.

“Britain is uniquely placed to lead this effort,” said Gordon Brown, “with the horrifying necessities being explained to the public by such televisual works as In The Night Garden. Adults will be driven to spend more time at work to get away from the mind-twisting horrors and their children will be properly indoctrinated in the cult of the Great Old Ones.

“Yes, my name is Great Cthulhu
Ia! Ia! Fhtagn gruh R’Lyeh!
Come to eat your mind and dreams too
Ia! Ia! Fhtagn’nagl gruh!”

sang Mr Brown.

“As their souls are consumed,” he said, “the workers’ semi-animate bodies can continue to go through the motions necessary to keeping the economic machinery fed. The surplus unemployed will make fine appetisers. You cannot kill that which has no life.”

Peter Mandelson then started a video showing strange multicoloured puppet creatures assembling and dancing frenetically, their incomprehensible eldritch chanting in an unknown tongue to a chorus of unearthly tritone-filled music growing faster and more anguished for three full hours until ending in a long, terrible chorus of howls, while brightly coloured lights flash on a gazebo and a toy train and farting blimp circle about. “Ipsy, upsy, Daisy Doo!” he added.

Nicolas Sarkozy objected, stressing French post-modernist philosophy’s powers to exterminate all rational thought. Angela Merkel offered up German porn. The Japanese merely smiled quietly.

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MENEZES, Stockwell, Wednesday (NNN) — Luckless cipher Sir Paul Stephenson has been named as Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police.

Sir Paul, 55, who was deputy to previous chief Sir Ian Blair, said he was “enormously proud” and was looking forward to bringing “a complete change, only somehow more of exactly the same.”

Leading a staff of more than 50,000 and overseeing a £3.5bn budget, he will be expected to continue the fight against terrorism, young people wherever they may be and falling house prices. He said his priorities would include cutting crime, catching criminals and “all that police-y stuff. The job of the Met is to deal with crime and make the streets of London safer. And state the bleeding obvious in press conferences.”

Sir Paul’s first priorities include the Olympics, the arrests of MPs, youth knife murders, organised crime, child protection, the recession and anything at all that doesn’t bring to mind electricians being shot through the head in tube trains by armed police. He will be meeting with the National Black Police Association to offer them an entirely new series of platitudes and empty gestures.

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WIKIALITY, San Francisco, Monday (NNN) — The online user-generated social networking site Wikipedia and the venerable Encyclopædia Britannica are both considering radical changes in how they are run.

Wikipedia is proposing a software change that would see revisions on some articles being approved before they went live on the site. “Our featured articles on subjects such as 4chan cannot be sullied with false reports and vandalism BUSH IS GAY LOLOLOLOL,” said Jimmy Wales.

The change has proven controversial. “It’s a slippery slope,” said administrator “WikiFiddler451” (real name WikiViolin451). “I don’t see how we can reasonably keep the Pokémon and Naruto entries sufficiently up-to-date and welcoming of new contributors. I understand the queue for edits to go live could be up to an hour. The occasional accusation of paedophilia against minor public figures in the page that’s top Google hit on their name is a small price to pay for the most up-to-date neutrality.”

Meanwhile, the Encyclopædia Britannica has considered adopting “wiki”-like methods (from the Hawaiian word “wikiwiki,” meaning “your proposed edit is stalled on a six-month discussion by obsessive nerds who failed a Turing test and speak entirely in WP:INITIALISMS”), particularly when it comes to their publicity. Under the plan, readers and contributing experts from Encyclopædia Dramatica will help expand and maintain press releases about those deemed “suppressive” by the editorial board, comparing them to public toilets and assorted unflattering Internet memes, and darkly insinuating that Google only pushes Wikipedia because they’re in it for the money.

However, Britannica said it would not follow in letting a wide range of people make contributions to its press slander. “We will require UnNews accreditation at the very least,” said Britannica president Andrew Keen. “Citation is needed.”

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T’MILL, Westminster, Friday (NNN) — David Cameron has announced a shadow cabinet reshuffle to enhance the Tories’ working class credibility.

“Everything old is old again,” said Mr Cameron. William Hague has been reinstalled as the reserve Dave, Ken Clarke has been brought back to be snide at Gordon Brown and John Major will reprise his role as the nerdy little goit who got his head flushed every lunchtime. George Osborne has been sent off for de-elocution lessons. “’Appen,” said Mr Osborne.

“Labour’s a bunch of middle-class wankers tryin’ to administer everyone,” said David ‘Nosher’ Davis. “The Tories respect the povs’ intelligence and intrinsic street-smarts, and know how to go up to them and say, ‘yo, blud, I’m an avaricious self-centred materialist like you, bro’.’ Some of our best Tory leaders ’ave come from the estates. Er, don’t tell Dave I said that, okay.”

Eric Pickles, the cartoonish fat working-class businessman parachuted in as Party chair, concurred. “It’s necessary to turning the misdirected energy of the youth to good account. We need a real commitment to tackling the causes of crime, and to teach young people how to commit only decent businessman-like corner-cutting of greater plausible deniability.”

“I’d like to state my firm support for this initiative,” said London mayor Boris Johnson. “What ho, gosh darn those wack Nu-Labour sucka MCs, chaps. My Brompton weighs a ton.”

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BOLGIAS 8 AND 9, Pit of Despair, Friday (NNGadget) — In a bid to win back profits after huge layoffs worldwide, Microsoft UK has launched MSN MusicTurd™ for mobile phones.

The highly competitive music store offers tracks at twice the price, DRM-locked to a chosen individual ear of the purchaser. If they can get it to work with their phone. Microsoft were careful to point out to the financial press that charging your account, however, works perfectly and that the helpline number has been connected to a fax machine.

Microsoft is confident the MusicTurd™ service will attract millions of people who will buy tracks from them to play on one mobile ever, not transferable to any other device including the same phone’s replacement, in preference to stores offering cheaper unlocked MP3s, and won’t just drive people to filesharing networks, MP3 blogs or copying 500 gigabyte USB disks full of music from their friends in sheer disgust at these corporate tools.

“We understand that lots of people use telephones they carry around with them these days,” said Hugh Griffiths, Microsoft UK head of Mobile, “and you can even play music on them. A bit like a transistor radio. Whatever will they think of next! So if we get the consumer interest, we’ll offer an enhanced version, MusicTurd™ Polished™. Like we’re doing with Windows 7. You can’t expect it to be any good until the third version, of course. So buy the first two and it’ll be fantastic. Trust us on this. We have hundreds of loyal suck, er, customers on the MSN website, I’m sure we can squeeze them until the pips rattle.

“What do you mean, I’m lacking enthusiasm for our product? You’d think I was trying to get redundancy in the next round of layoffs or something. Ha! Ha! What a ridiculous notion.”

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THE LITTLE MPs’ ROOM, Palace of Westminster, hour thirteen and counting (NNN) — The Government has swallowed a bitter new weight loss pill in attempts to stop the release of details of MPs’ expense reports.

The drug, FOIlistat, will produce a massive outflow in the event of an MP even thinking about expense padding, revealing full details of tapeworms and other parasites, a telltale Brown stain and a pungent stench. Any fat in the expense report will be passed through the National Audit Office undigested, leading to the customary flatulence and informational incontinence.

Shadow Commons leader Alan Duncan suggested caution. “We don’t just want, by making our expenses available, to allow ourselves to be subject to open season of malicious and vexatious attacks, such as people actually reading them and commenting on them publicly. With friends like this, who needs enemas?” He then issued a truly resounding wet fart and quickly shuffled off sideways.

Much like the drug, the prospect of releasing their expenses has made MPs shit themselves copiously. “Not only will the direct Pavlovian approach work,” said Owen Blacker of mySociety, “it’ll keep us in Channel 5 comedy for decades.”

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BOLGIAS 8 AND 9, Westminster, Tuesday (NNN) — Tens of people have gathered in the British capital to see Gordon Hussein Brown (name changed last week by deed poll) sworn at in as Britain’s second president.

Crowds inexplicably failed to pack into the Parliamentary gallery from dawn in a cold and wintry London to witness the opening of Parliament. The President arrived in his official Robin Reliant to deliver his inaugural address, a twenty-minute speech focusing on the theme of everything having gone to shit and Mr Brown being the one to get us out of it, having gotten us into it.

Unprecedented security is in place, with two or three security personnel, all called Reg, on stand-by in Westminster. Security officials said they were monitoring a “potential threat” of “uncertain credibility” on inauguration day.

Across the UK, there is a sense of history being made. Gloomy Monday; house prices dropping; terrible weather; a new Doctor Who; Celebrity Big Brother; the X Factor Christmas number one. Anticipation has been building across the country ahead of the ceremony.

But Mr Brown faces serious challenges. The UK is gripped by uncertainty as it faces its worst crisis in decades. And as well as Peter Mandelson being back, the economy’s in the toilet and everyone’s broke.

But hope rises still. In a gesture of good cheer, the Chancellor has announced the introduction to the market of special duty-free Labour Party fundraising refreshments of rebranded White Lightning and Tennants Super.

George W. Bush has also been in touch with Number 10, letting them know he’s currently free to join Mr Brown’s Government of All the Talents. Lord Mandelson said he would definitely process Mr Bush’s application within the next several years.

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THE TUBE, The Bloody Commute, seven bloody AM (NNN) — Phil Space, an expert in depression at the University of Metro, has discovered a mathematical formula to pinpoint today as Blue Monday, the day when six factors come together to leave journalists at their most miserable.

The factors are: the dank and gloomy weather; the lack of articles to fill the spaces between the ads; a feeling of monotony writing the seventh “the economy’s utterly sodomised” story; broken New Year’s resolutions to get a more socially worthwhile job, like picking maggots out of a corpse’s arse with your teeth; low levels of motivation; and it’s bloody Monday. Also, that you ran this story last year but that was on January 21st.

The mathematical formula for misery is:

— where P is the weather, O is Barack Obama’s inauguration while we’ve still got Gordon Brown, T is the probability of Abi Titmuss playing Doctor Who’s next companion, B is the lack of stories about students in bikinis in this weather, W is Amy Winehouse flashing her tits around in a smacked-out stupor, R is recycling stories on ever-shorter time scales and H is going past horror at the idea of your boss noticing to losing hope that he ever will.

Phil offers tips for overcoming gloom: “Focus on the good things you do have in your life. If being one of the lucky people who still has a job gives you not even a slight sneer of superiority over the unemployed masses, and instead you have this overwhelming urge to get out a machine gun and kill every fucker on the tube in the morning … well, it’s worth a try. Also, good cheer comes in pints and makes for a bloody happy Friday and Saturday.”

Alistair Darling has been asked to stop visiting investment firm offices in the City talking up optimism and a more positive outlook by City of London street cleaners, who are running low on body bags.

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CONTINUE TO SHOP, Avoid Panic Buying, Friday (NNGadget) — A computer worm that spreads through low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs without the latest security updates is posing a growing threat to users blitheringly stupid enough to still think Windows is not ridiculously and unfixably insecure by design.

Despite many years’ warnings that Microsoft regards security as a marketing problem and has only ever done the absolute minimum it can get away with, millions of users who click on any rubbish they see in the hope of pictures of female tennis stars having wardrobe malfunctions still fail to believe that taking Windows out on the Internet is like standing bent over in the street in downtown Gomorrah, naked, arse greased up and carrying a flashing neon sign saying “COME AND GET IT.”

Microsoft cannot believe people have not applied the patch for the problem, just because they keep trying to use Windows Genuine Advantage to break legally-bought systems. “Don’t they trust us?” asked marketing marketer Steve Ballmer.

Millions of smug Mac users and the four hundred smug Linux users pointed and laughed, having long given up trying to convince their Windows-using friends to see sense. “There’s a reason the Unix system on Mac OS X is called Darwin,” said appallingly smug Mac user Arty Phagge.

“It can’t be stupid if everyone else runs it,” said Windows user Joe Beleaguered, who had lost all his email, business files, MP3s and porn again. “Macs cost more than Windows PCs.”

“Yes,” said Phagge. “Yes, they do.”

Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy frantically tried to get our attention about something or other, but we can’t say we care.

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THE SPRAWL, Gernsback Continuum, Thursday (NNN) — The Government has approved plans to build another six runways and three terminals at the renamed Mega-Heathrow air city.

The new runways will be built as part of the process of paving the entire area inside the M25, with designated urban planning “grey belts.”

The plans are considered essential to maintaining London’s economic well-being. The city will be enclosed in a series of large perspex bubbles, with people travelling over the flooded streets in advanced scientific hoverchairs. Official Thames crash zones for Airbus A320s will be built around the Embankment. “We are taking care to preserve our architectural heritage,” said Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon. “Rest assured, the Gherkin will be there forever.”

“The new runways are environmentally unacceptable,” said Ravenwoo Granola of the Fluffy Nice People Smashing Things Alliance. “People should learn to walk to New York instead.”

The village of Little Boring will be demolished. “I’ve lived my entire life here,” said Brenda Busybody, 77 (IQ). “It’s the destruction of a community. We might have to marry people we’re not related to!” After demolition the site will be salted by a volunteer workgroup of people who left the village as teenagers after being ostracised for having been born with ten fingers.

“I hope it’ll help global warming,” said Luscious Lucy, 19, of Sheppey, in her editorial column on page 3 of The Sun. “I can wear a bikini all year round. Or not. Fnarr!” The fashion page shows pinstripe bikinis and Speedos for office workers.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson is firmly against the plan. “Paving areas where the nice middle-class people who voted for me live is unacceptable. Instead, we should build Boris’s Super Whizzo Thunderbirds Airport Fortress in the Thames estuary. And pave Sheppey.” Luscious Lucy concurred this was probably for the best.

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BACKBENCH RUFFIANS, Madchester, Wednesday (NNN) — MP Graham Stringer has claimed that dyslexia “does not exist” and is merely a “cruel fiction” to cover up poor teaching.

“I am not, for one minute, implying that all functionally illiterate people take drugs and engage in illegal activities,” he said, “but the value of stringing ‘em all up would be remarkable. To this end, I am moving to have dyslexia declared a criminal offence under anti-terror legislation.

“Also, we’re going to do something about those laggards taking up hospital beds and the evil scum criminally claiming disability, not to mention the layabouts and parasites claiming they should get a State pension just because they’ve ‘retired.’

“Synthetic Phonics™ will cure everything! It will simultaneously let the children pass tests and yet be so bored silly by deciphering words as if they’re coded messages that they’ll stick to The Sun and cause us much less trouble in the future.”

Synthetic Phonics was famously tested in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland on a small selected group of bright students of the sort who would learn to read off cereal packets and road signs given half a chance. “That it failed when tested on thickos is obviously due to PFI. That’s my backbench ‘rebel’ cred, by the way.”

He says the dyslexia industry should be “abolished. Next they’ll be advocating ‘genes’ and the ‘germ theory’ and ‘evolution.’ They should be convicted of war crimes in The Hague and sentenced to death, with the psychiatrists. I also have this excellent selection of reading comprehension texts by the noted educationalist and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard. Have you heard of him?”

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MENEZES, Stockwell, Tuesday (NNN) — The British Transport Police has proposed that passengers buying a London train or tube ticket will be deemed to have consented to a public cavity search while their friends point and laugh.

The BTP wants to change the railways’ “conditions of carriage” to close a loophole that means officers at stations have no legal power to search someone for being brown or black in public. “Apparently it’s no longer legally considered ‘reasonable suspicion,’” said Jacqui Smith.

Consent to what would be extreme sadomasochistic practices if we weren’t talking about TSA personnel is already a condition of travel in the United States. Some searchers, such as Big Bertha at Seattle Airport, become tourist attractions.

Additional plans involve requiring all commuters to vote Labour in June’s council elections and consenting to being shot through the head by police marksmen.

The home secretary also wants to introduce orders banning individuals from visiting particular areas or wearing insignia or clothes that signal their allegiances. “We’re particularly worried about this ‘Nike’ gang we’re seeing across London, with its ‘swoosh’ logo depicting a large knife wound. This ‘er-and-bee’ music is also to be restricted.”

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CYBERMANDY, The Information Super-Motorway, Monday (NNN) — Peter Mandelson has launched LabourListing.com, a completely independent Labour Party website not affiliated or controlled by the party in any way whatsoever.

“Spin is dead,” said Lord Mandelson today. “We’ve issued a press release to this effect to our favoured journalistic contacts.”

The site features an avatar of Lord Mandelson, a small “Handy Mandy” figure, to guide the reader through a very special Labour experience. Handy Mandy will offer the reader a completely free choice of several places to go to next, all leading to the same following page.

To compete with the highly successful ConservativeHome site, LabourLurching will feature:

• A “take to this ‘Web’ thing” initiative involving the MPs most in tune with the culture and technologies of the Internet, such as Andy Burnham, with lots of help from his friends from the record companies. Labour supporters will be able to help vote on British Board for Web Classification ratings. “We should get through all two hundred million websites in no time.”

• An Obama-style “virtual phone bank” for Labour campaigners in the run-up to this year’s council elections. The site will include coaching lessons in sounding like a robocall recording.
• Breaking into “social networking,” on trendy and popular sites such as Friendster.
• Expanding the use of “virals” and web humour. “We’re feeding pictures of Dave Cameron to 4chan, and we’re pretty sure we’re close to having one get popular instead of being followed up with a string of cartoons of Japanese schoolgirls with inflated breasts. Those nice fellows from b3ta also offered to help, and we can’t wait to see what they can do for us.”
• Teaching Gordon Brown to use emoticons. “We’ve nearly managed to get him past putting frowny faces on everything.”

“The project will only work if we can end top-down politics,” said Lord Mandelson. “I am, of course, the first person anyone would think of for such a task.”

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YOUR LAPTOP, Your Bed, When You Think No-One’s Looking (NNGadget) — A new study shows that using Google will destroy the planet. A typical Google search on a completely random topic such as “charlot chirch sex tape” produces enough carbon for 98 pencils or seventeen boiled kettles and brutally murders an average of two point four cute fluffy things.

“A Google search has a definite environmental impact,” said Alex Wissner-Gross of Harvard University. “Instead, you should use Windows Live Search — to be renamed Windows Love Search — which produces butterflies and baby seals. That’s instead of whatever you were looking for, but hey — it’s for the planet.”

Google is “secretive” about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. “Or at least, they told us to fuck off when we asked how many endangered species they’d killed off today. This proves their inherent malice. If you search using Google you may as well be strangling kittens. You should go to a trustworthy company of demonstrated moral fibre, like Microsoft.”

A recent Gartner report said the global IT industry generates as much greenhouse gas as the airlines industry. “Primary in this is the large quantities of hot air produced by completely independent analysts to support the views of the highest bidder.”

The Home Office welcomed the findings. “This proves that Internet users might as well be terrorists,” said Jacqui Smith, “and so we’ll treat them like they are. All Internet access in the UK will be run through Cleanfeed filters and your electronic ration book ticked off per web page used. Reading Wikipedia or the Guido Fawkes blog will, of course, be declared capital offences.”

Microsoft has demonstrated its environmental credentials by recycling Vista, its huge and lumbering Hummer of an operating system, as Windows 7. “All new and yet … old,” said marketing marketer Steve Ballmer. “Save the planet with Windows 7! Requires 4 core processor 2 gigabytes memory 500 gigabyte hard disk and basement nuclear power plant. Power plant sold separately.”

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THE CHAPS, Hooray Club, Friday (NNN) — A member of the Young Conservatives has been expelled after going to a “bad taste” party dressed as a Young Conservative.

Young Conservative Matthew Lewis not only dressed up as a Tory, but bragged about it on his Arsebook page, saying he only needed “stockings and suspenders, a bin bag on my head and a tangerine in my mouth” to complete his outfit.

“There was a brief moment when I thought I might have gone too far with the costume, but it was OK — someone else went as Maggie Thatcher.”

Tory leader David Cameron had only a week before laid down new rules to avoid embarrassing gaffes by party activists.

“I fully understand the pain my actions have brought,” said Mr Lewis. “Dave says we have to act like fluffy greenie Lib Dems or something in public, at least where people can see us.”

“This offensive behaviour is not only shocking but intolerable and completely unacceptable,” said party chair Caroline Spelman. “There is no place for this sort of person in the party. He should look to his betters as an example, such as Prince Har … I’ll start again, shall I.”

“The public will think long and hard before trusting anyone who acts like a Tory with their votes,” said ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, to sniggers.

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KALLIKAK, Gattaca, Friday (NotScientist) — The first British baby designed to be free of the “journalism” gene has been born.

The breakthrough gives hope to other parents afflicted by the condition, often running in families. “It will be mere seconds before blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan clones genetically engineered with hyperintelligence are frog-marching into the White House, the Kremlin and the United Nations to take over the world and condemn the rest of us inferiors to perpetual slavery,” said one rejected embryo before the autoclave kicked in.

Pro-life campaigners claim it is morally wrong to weed out imperfect babies. “Today it’s journalism, tomorrow it’s cancer, next year it’ll be Young Conservativism,” said Ann Widdecombe. “They’re already screening for all manner of cosmetic reasons in parts of Europe that I can’t specifically name right now. This is a tool to search and kill! We must shun and despise the children resulting from this genetic Frankensteinism.

“Instead, we should deliberately bring children into the world to suffer and then cut their disability benefits. To prove the strength of our feeling on this matter, we’re implanting unwanted eggs carrying breast cancer genes into ourselves personally, so the children can grow up living in fear their whole short lives of their own breasts killing them. It’s right and natural. We’re also looking to reintroduce bubonic plague and smallpox, on conservation grounds.”

“I don’t think you can equate eight cells in a dish to a human being,” said the parents’ doctor, “although it could probably edit the Daily Mail.”

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AN INCONVENIENT TROUT, Gulf Stream, Tuesday (NNN) — Controversy has erupted over incandescent light bulbs being phased out in Britain to be replaced with horrible expensive yellow things that look like robot marital aids.

The switch to compact fluorescent lamps is expected to save households two-thirds of their monthly income, singlehandedly save Britain from climate change and bring about world peace, harmony and a top 10 chart not filled with rubbish.

However, many people find the low-energy bulbs ugly, slow to warm up and much more expensive, and the harsher light they give off akin to that of a police cell or McDonald’s. Their rapid flicker contains coded messages designed to hypnotise independent-minded Britons and turn them into gibberish-spouting Eurocrat cultists. The bulbs are made entirely of mercury, polonium and ebola. Scientists have proven that Hitler used low-energy bulbs for illumination when writing Mein Kampf, and paedophiles prefer internet images of dear innocent children taken under their unforgiving glare.

The Daily Mail has come out strongly against the compact fluorescents. “British cowed by tin pot marxists maddest flights from reality political class bizarre gesture Bliar take away liberty march on Westminster revolt against Europe IF YOU LIKE IT SO MUCH WHY DON’T YOU LIVE THERE.” To this end, the paper is giving away five thousand incandescent bulbs free when you spend a pound calling an 0900 number.

“We can’t be having this com-pack fluoro Euro rubbish,” said Brenda Busybody, 77 (IQ) of East Cheam. “They just don’t have the same warm glow to them. It’s so cold this week! We need more gas lamps and burning torches, they go well with the pitchforks.”

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NO HEAVEN, Cold Harsh Reality, Tuesday (NNN) — The Bus Atheist campaign launched today, with over 800 atheists to carry signs saying “There’s probably no bus” in locations all over the country.

The campaign was started as a “positive” response to the London Transport signs all over the city claiming to be places where buses would appear, some claiming they even did so at predictable intervals. “This is despite a complete lack of evidence for any such phenomenon,” said Professor Richard Dawkins, “nor any explanation why such a thing would occur. Our rational slogan will hopefully reassure anyone who has been scared by this kind of evangelism. Must dash, I have a Catholic priest out back to bugger with a hot poker.”

The campaign has come in for criticism. “They should give the money to those in need of it,” said the Church, “like us, for instance. Hardly any cash over here. The Monarchy could do with some too. Dig deep!”

The £135,000 raised for the campaign will be directed to the needy and deprived: West End adland execs feeling the brunt of the recession. “Spare a fiver for a line? Please give so they may grow.”

“You wait ages for an atheist, then eight hundred come along at once. Boris has made a hash of it yet again,” said Ken Livingstone, though no-one asked.

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MICROSOFT WOTCH, Cupertino, Monday (NNGadget) — Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, 53, announced Monday he was being treated for a “hormone imbalance” but would remain head of the company.

“I find myself unable to give the Macworld keynote tomorrow,” said Jobs, “but my truly spectacular rack will be well worth the hormonal rages. It’s like six months of PMS, though my engineers will tell you there’s hardly a difference.”

The keynote, to be presented by Pamela Anderson and Jenna Jameson, is rumored to introduce the new iKini and iFront lingerie range, in signature translucent white, with eight gigabytes of music storage and 3G phone connectivity. “Left one for signal strength, right one for network.”

Jobs noted that his decision not to give the Macworld keynote had set off a “flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.” To restore investor confidence, he has been fitted with a full set of cybernetic implants providing full live data on his bodily functions, broadcast in sideband data on the Disney Channel and downloadable daily on iTunes.

Bill Gates pooh-poohed the iFront range, offering his new Zunewear “Carrot” Macho Dude-Pants, which would make you look better “every day of the year” (except December 31st) and “show off your Ballmers like never before. DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! I’M A PEE-CEEEE!”

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TELEWEST, Los Angeles, Friday (NNN) — Virgin Media (“Let me tell you what ‘Like a Virgin’ is about. It’s all about a girl who digs a guy with a big Dick. The entire song. It’s a metaphor for big Dicks.”) has hired Jules Winnfield of the Marcellus Wallace Organization to promote its super-fast 50Mb broadband service.

In the advertisement, Jules Winnfield and Sir Richard Branson go to Virgin Media customer service to recover a briefcase belonging to their boss. After screaming “Technical, melonfarmer! Do you speak it?” they kill every internet site accessible from the service except Wikipedia. While driving the download back to Mr Wallace, they accidentally shoot Wikipedia in the face. Now they’re picking bits of their servers out of the upholstery. “When you came pulling in here,” says Quentin Tarantino, “did you notice a sign out in front of my house that said Dead NTL Storage?”

The ad ends with a stirring speech from Winnfield:

The path of the righteous browser is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is the IWF who in the name of the RIAA and goodwill shepherds the marks through the valley of darkness, for they are truly their brother’s keepers and the finders of lost downloads. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know My name is the Lord when I pop a download cap in their—

At this point the screen goes blue and the set-top box locks up.

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