News of the News

I DON’T FANCY YOURS MUCH, Down The Pub, Monday (NNN) — Women are gradually becoming more attractive in an evolutionary “beauty race,” at least where Photoshop is available.

Beautiful women get more attention to detail and fixing of flaws than their plainer counterparts, certainly better than the days of actual physical airbrushes. Men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors, as proven by several generations of Top Gear.

“You just can’t do much with the men, the clone tool on the hair’s too obvious and then you get on some snarky ‘Photoshop Phoulups’ blog,” said Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro. “We had the same problem with Susan Boyle’s eyebrows.”

Beautiful women in magazines have more children and these daughters, once adult, also tend to end up in magazines. “Look at Paula Yates and her daughters, Peaches and Pixie … er, I’ll think of another example in a moment.”

The heritability of attractiveness is widely accepted. When Elizabeth Jagger became a model, her mother, the former model Jerry Hall, said: “It’s in her genes. Self-obsession, thickness … I contributed too, of course.”

Professor Hunt looks forward to future developments. “Beer’s always good when Photoshop fails. Women need to carry beer around with them more.”

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WITWICKY, Arctic Circle, Tuesday (NNN) — Controversy continues over US President Barack Obama’s place of birth and Constitutional eligibility to be president, with even senior Republicans wondering if Obama is really an American citizen, or a Decepticon spy.

“The birth certificate was falsely attested by Mr Obama’s mother and grandmother so that a custody battle would be heard in the US and not under the laws of Cybertron,” said Senator Optimus Prime (R-UT). “The plan was part of a conspiracy of communists, Muslims, Jews, Decepticons and French to take over the world with the coming of the Anti-Spark, who would magically transform into a 1961 Ford Fairlane convertible. With red and white pinstriping. Autobots will of course rejoin the Allspark in the Rapture, but the rest of you are fucked.”

When the Obama presidential campaign produced documentation, it claimed to be an extract of birth. However, it was not a full manufacturer’s certificate of live birth with original warranty certification and service log book. Experts who examined the image in high resolution accessed viral data that caused their brains to explode and their souls to return to the Allspark. This suggests to observers that Obama was really created in a lab on Cybertron and was later smuggled into Hawaii, before accidentally crashing into the World Trade Center in September 2001 during overly boisterous horseplay with another Decepticon.

Not all Republicans agree with the theory. “I myself was manufactured in the Panama Occupied Zone during the era of steam,” said Senator John McCain (RINO-AZ). “My boilerplates are certified 100% All-American. The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that an American parent makes you ‘natural born’ wherever you were born. The President’s Irish heritage through Ann Dunham is no barrier to the presidency.”

Fox News presenters continue to trumpet the “birther” theory, for “the good of all Americans,” said pundit Michael Bay. “By doubling down on the most advanced and developed of patriotic theories, by driving the center of the Republican Party further down the path of righteousness, we are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of that core of only the most dedicated Americans. All five to seven percent of them. Any suggestion this is all for Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line is scurrilous. So stay tuned to this channel! You never know what rabid lies you might hear anywhere else! We report, you decide! And now a message from our sponsors Blackout, Scorponok, Frenzy, Barricade, Starscream, Devastator and Bonecrusher.”

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DOWN HERE AT THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING, Desu Desu Desu, Monday (NNGadget) — AT&T, the largest phone company in the US and a major Internet provider, has issued an apology for having to unblock 4chan after accidentally blocking it Sunday night.

AT&T said that its customers were affected by a DoS (denial of stomach) attack appearing to come from the image-board site. 4chan users reacted in outrage, thinking the block was actually for network security reasons. “It’s a matter of pride. If we cannot make you hurl in 35 seconds we lose,” said one user, ‘Anonymous.’ “DISREGARD THAT I SUCK COCKS,” he added when questioned further.

4chan is the World’s Most Work-Unsafe Website. The browser cache of 4chan regulars (a.k.a. “mudkipz”) is enough to send ten normal Internet users to Guantanamo Bay. If you look at 4chan from your work computer, your monitor explodes, smoke comes out of your PC and your Ethernet cable melts. Then Networks come over to your desk and beat the fucking crap out of you personally. Remember: your boss is still trying to work out how he can look at girlie pictures in Excel. Don’t disturb his business labors.

For a site reviled by all, 4chan appeared to have a remarkable number of readers, as AT&T discovered after the resignation of 95% of overnight customer service staff. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am to find out just how popular 4chan is with our customers,” said AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson at his last press conference before leaving to take up his new job swimming through cesspools to orally pleasure random hobos, which he said would make him feel “cleaner” than continuing to supply 4chan to people. “It’s high time we gave up on this ‘communication’ thing altogether and went back to grunting in caves. Bad idea. Awful idea.”

4chan users celebrated their “flawless victory” today with a Foul Frog/Socially Awkward Penguin posting marathon before eating another pizza, drinking another quart of Diet Coke, desultory masturbation and crying themselves to sleep from futility.

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OOMPA LOOMPA VILLAGE, Silicone Valley, Sunday (News of the Screws) — Katie “Jordan” Price took HUNKY television cage fighter Alex Reid back to her hotel suite for a night of WILD SEX, according to a press release issued last night, hours after her previous press release denying they were together.

According to the attached script, the GLAMOUR girl enjoyed her night of PASSION in a suite at Liverpool’s Malmaison Hotel with Reid on Thursday, with stage directions to emerge at lunchtime the following day grinning from ear to ear.

“They were all over each other earlier in the night,” said an anonymous source at her publicist. The night of LUST could be heard by fellow hotel guests, though some questioned the MOANING apparently replaying on a five-minute loop.

When she emerged from her ROMP, she was half an hour late for a signing session for her new novel Cubic Zirconia. After fifteen minutes’ patient explanation of which end of a pen was which, the ghost writer who did the actual writing sat down to do the signing as well.

Just over an hour later they left and headed to The Circle private members’ club where Jordan FELT Alex up, necked vodka from the bottle, accidentally neglected to expose her NIPPLES for minutes at a time and collapsed in a shambolic heap after a LESBIAN snog.

Estranged husband Peter Andre says he is “shocked and appalled. There’s actually someone more vacuous than me in the world, and I married her. Bloody hell.”

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CHILLER, Off The Perch Saturday (N! News) — Michael Jackson’s news value was missing at his autopsy, it was claimed last night. The front pages of all newspapers today showed a hole where an actual news story should have been.

A witness claimed to have seen Jackson’s news story on an editor’s desk, saying: “The prosthesis the journalists normally attached to their damaged story was missing, revealing bits of tasteless synthetic papier-maché surrounding a small dark hole.”

It is believed that journalists “squeezing Jackson until the pips rattled” had so destroyed the 50-year-old’s newsworthiness that even Daily Mail readers thought their paper was going beyond the pale and perhaps, as famous as he was, the poor fellow could probably be left to rest in peace now.

“But we can probably tie in Katie Price’s breasts if we try,” said one contestant for a completely synthetic Pulitzer, “so to speak. Swine flu should be in there too, it’s pretty popular at the moment. Gotta rack up those web hits! From those thieving bastards at Google.”

Jackson’s personal doctor is now an official manslaughter suspect over his death, utterly reliable celebrity gossip sites have revealed. A toxicology report on Jackson’s body is set to be released next week, by which time this week’s baseless speculations as to his doctor, his children, his brothers and Elvis’ passing UFO will be completely forgotten in time for another “full house” of identical front pages on every paper in Britain.

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WINDOWSGRAD, Seattle Oblast, Thursday (NNGadget) — Microsoft has reported spectacular results for the April to June quarter, say completely independent tech journalists.

“With profits allegedly down by a third,” said Rob Enderle, “Microsoft is absolutely poised to make a brilliant recovery next quarter. Windows 7, man!”

Revenue came in at $13.1 billion, down 17% from the same quarter last year. Net profit on this revenue was $3.1 billion, down 29% from a year earlier. Microsoft shares fell 7% in after-hours trading.

“Wall Street analysts claim these numbers don’t match their expectations,” said Mary Jo Foley. “What do they know about business? They should be grateful that Microsoft made their so-called numbers twenty-two years running, and not whine because they haven’t made any of them in the last year. It’s their patriotic duty to raise Microsoft’s stock price. Wall Street are a pack of un-American communists.”

The world’s largest software maker said it had been affected by weakness in the global personal computer and server markets, particularly by having to sell Windows XP for $5 to keep netbooks from going entirely Linux.

“Some manufacturers were going to release netbooks with ARM processors, which would run Linux or Chrome OS at twice the speed, half the heat and ten-hour battery life, but wouldn’t run Windows 7. Microsoft assures us this is a crushing blow for ARM,” said Michael Silver of Gartner. “ARM didn’t have anything to say to that, just a guffawing sound down the phone. Obviously they’re upset and hysterical.”

The one bright spot was the company’s cost-cutting measures. Five thousand employees were laid off in January, with another thousand to go in August. Further, all management staff have been given bonuses to ensure their continued excellent performance.

“Microsoft’s future is absolutely assured,” said Michael Gartenberg. “Windows 7 will be completely unstoppable! Look at it on this laptop Microsoft, er, lent me! Hold on, I’ll just get out of Ubuntu and boot it into Windows … uh, don’t print that bit.”

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MRSA MEMORIAL, Staffordshire Hospital, Thursday (NNN) — There were an estimated 100,000 new cases of swine flu in Britain last week, the Health Protection Agency said today, after 55,000 new cases in the previous week. At this rate, every person in Britain will be infected by November.

Although considered a “mild” flu, with sufferers only experiencing a week of fever, puking and shitting, the new H1N1 variant is remarkably infectious, appearing able to spread across telephone lines and through lists of swine flu symptoms on Internet news sites.

“We have not as yet managed to link a lack of swine flu to poverty, deficient character and loose morals,” said Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson, “but that is, after all, the cause of every other problem facing the NHS: patients.”

The World Health Organisation has proclaimed that swine flu will become “a new and vital part of the human genome.” To this end the National Flu Service has set up a website to make sure everyone gets their due ration of the disease. Built by a PFI consortium headed by EDS Capita Goatse, the site crashed within five minutes of launch this morning and should be up again within twelve months.

This morning, like every morning, Robert Neville woke to fight back the infected. The genetic recombinant H1N1 virus had infected almost everyone in the world. Of the survivors, almost all had permanently succumbed to the primary symptom: bacon. A genetic need for bacon. All the bacon you could want. Forever.

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TURN 360 DEGREES, And Moonwalk Away, Tuesday (NNGadget) — Microsoft has announced its long-rumoured handheld XBox gaming console, to compete with the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS.

“The GameBoy will be wiped out by this!” said marketing marketer Shane Kim. The console, to be named the ZuneX (”we wanted a really evocative brand that would set the tone straight away”) will integrate with XBox Live Arcade and the Zune music store and have phone capabilities.

“We’re also looking at instant-on, 1080p high-definition, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix deals, Project Natal, Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8, downloadable rings of death in every possible colour … nothing will hold a candle to the ZuneX. Google and Apple will be quaking in fear.” The E74 error will also be updated to E75.

The device will be two feet by three feet and weigh twenty-four pounds. “That’s an important feature. Wii Fit just can’t compete with the rippling abs the ZuneX will give you.” The device is fully portable within the length of the twenty-foot three-phase 415 volt power cable.

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SHIPMAN BUILDING, University of Crippen, Monday (NNN) — The pain of childbirth is essential to proper bonding with the child and a “rite of passage” experience, said a male professor of midwifery today.

Dr Denis Walsh, who will never get sex again in his life, said pain helped regulate childbirth and prepared her for the responsibility of motherhood. In addition, epidurals were specifically condemned in Leviticus and would “lead to the souls of the damnable trollop and her odious whelp” being in danger of Hellfire for crimes against nature.

“It is essential for women to understand that they are failures as mothers and human beings if they do things that cost the NHS money that could be spent on management consultants or IT projects,” said Dr Walsh to a baying crowd. “Also, their BMI is high enough that we can blame anything we fuck up on that too, just to make them feel even worse.”

Several mothers, many carrying pitchforks, carried Dr Walsh off to put a barbed stick down his penis so that the pain would make him a better father. They also demonstrated to the crowd his suggestions for alternate birthing methods, in which they inserted a watermelon into his anus and pulled it back out again repeatedly with forceps, hypnosis and a birthing pool to hand to alleviate any discomfort he may have experienced.

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LECHER SQUARE, City of Sodomy, Thursday (N! News) — Emma Watson sadly avoided another wardrobe malfunction at the New York premiere of the latest Harry Potter movie, swapping her floaty evening gown for black leather.

She caused head explosions in approximately a zillion smelly nerds when they heard she was wearing a black leather halter-neck top for the New York premiere. At the British premiere on Monday, Miss Watson “unwittingly” flashed her underwear and half of her left breast at waiting photographers as she adjusted the vintage Ossie Clark dress clinging wetly to her curves in the pouring rain. “At least I was wearing underwear,” she said to David Letterman, taunting the fanboys further.

“We were hoping for something better,” said rebelling Uighirs in Xinjiang Province as the Chinese army hunted them down to torture and kill them. “I mean, goodness me, when she actually reached puberty in the third film. I guess this is her inner Richard Dawkins showing through. KILL THE RELIGIOUS! FREE EMMA WATSON POSTER! Hubba hubba!”

J.K. Rowling was not worried about the weather or the behaviour of the actors. “Money, ME. Me, MONEY. The money flows in ONE DIRECTION. Just keep that straight and we’ll be fine.”

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FUCK THE MILLENNIUM, Arsenal, Thursday (NNN) — Wikipedia, the world’s fourth most popular website, has prominently featured the article “Gropecunt Lane,” a mediæval English name for a town’s prostitution district, on its front page today.

“The article has been voted one of the two thousand best on Wikipedia,” said Mark Pellegrini, the English Wikipedia Featured Articles Dictator. “The treatment is sober, academic and entirely educational in nature. Also, cunt.”

According to the article, the word “cunt” has been used for female genitalia in English since the year 1230, being considered increasingly obscene since the 1500s. The word comes from the Ancient Egyptian “qefen-t,” meaning “queef.” In The Miller’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer writes “And prively he caughte hire by the queynte” — the origin of the saying “how quaint.” Later noted usage includes John McCain’s paean of praise to his wife as plastering her makeup on “like a trollop, you goddamn cunt.” The article concludes by noting that BUSH IS GAY LOLOLOL.

Employers around the world have taken this as their excuse to block Wikipedia so people can get on with real work, such as Facebook and Twitter. The BBC News At One reported the incident with the introduction “Good afternoon and cunt.” Monocle-wearing 4chan users have started the Campaign for Real Cunts “to restore the old street names and bring back this piece of sadly vandalised British heritage.” The Internet Watch Foundation’s website has collapsed under the load of everyone going to report Wikipedia, just to say “hi and fuck you.”

The featuring of the word “cunt” on the world’s top educational site is part of an ongoing programme to avert Internet censorship by communicating to children that swearing and sex in the streets are boring, tedious and annoying things that old people do. “It’s brilliant!” said Australian Senator Steven Fielding. “With luck, we can make knowledge itself and the whole ungodly Enlightenment programme un-’cool’ as well. Also, uh, ‘ca-arnt.’”

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THE WAITING ROOM, Westminster, Wednesday (NN) — The House of Lords voted against a controversial move to protect Britons who help people bring an end to terminally-ill political careers.

The law presently states that anyone who helps another to commit suicide can be jailed for up to 14 years. However, destroying one’s career and future public image and taking the rest of the country with you whilst remaining technically living is not merely legal, but standard. The Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer decided last year to allow the slow destruction of the career and future of Gordon Brown, a 58-year-old man paralysed by a Peter Principle accident who started the slow process of career suicide at the Indignitas clinic in Westminster in 2007.

Mr Brown spoke out strongly against the amendment himself. “I believe it will place a new and invidious pressure on terminally incompetent people to think they are closer to the end of their jobs. I tick every box of the proposed criteria to be eliminated. Members of my own cabinet repeatedly suggest I should seek the ‘dignified option.’ But despite the times when my progressively worsening incompetence challenges me, I want to guarantee that you are with me, supporting my continued life and its value … what do you mean, you’ve already signed me up for it? Peter? Peter!”

NHS trust managers were most disappointed in the result. “Where there’s a living will, there’s a way!”

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STAPLES CENTER, Wasilla, Tuesday (NNN) — Sarah Palin has revealed what compelled her to quit as governor of Alaska at no notice: the media weirdness deficit with Michael Jackson gone.

“When the going gets tough,” said Mrs Palin in an impromptu speech this afternoon, “the winners get quitting! Life is about choices! It’s time to bring Alaiskah’s huge weird surplus to outside, to build up and fight for our country! We are not retreating, we are advancing! Into the fourth dimension!”

“The tension in her face during the resignation speech,” noted Bill Kristol of Fox News, “like a teenager trying to tell a pre-emptive whopper of a lie to her parents before they find out what she’s actually done — it was her angst and upset at the death of the King of Pop. A pain that all Americans share, as they do memorial moonwalks and sell tickets to the memorial at inflated prices on eBay in the finest American can-do free enterprise spirit.”

Mrs Palin flew herself down to Los Angeles for the Jackson memorial concert, flinging herself onto the golden casket as it came up on stage with a spectacular series of dance moves, culminating in shooting the head off a zombie moose.

BBC News respectfully played the entirety of the memorial concert, which was much more newsworthy than Uighurs rioting in Xinjiang Province in China or anything. “It’s not like they could even get more interest on Twitter than Jackson,” said on-the-spot reporter Matthew Price. “Get with the programme, Uighurs!”

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WASILLA HIGH SCHOOL, Alaiskah, Friday (NNN) — Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin has suddenly resigned, citing attacks from the press making it impossible to do her job.

“Let me explain it with basketball. It’s the national full-court press picking away right now. A good point guard drives through a full court press like a mav’rick, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket. Then the winged monkeys descend, in gay married pairs, flinging poop at me an’ reciting the Koran in French. And I shoot them outa the sky — bang, bang, pow! Quitters stick it out, but winners quit! For victory!”

The governor put her famous financial prudence at the core of the decision. “I can’t let your money and time go to waste just so I can hold the title of governor. That I’ll get ten times the cash on the fundie lecture circuit doesn’t affect my decision at all.”

Mrs Palin firmly omitted crediting by any mention the ridiculous allegations of corruption in the construction of the Wasilla Stadium and coincidental observations that the family’s house was built at the same time by the same contractors from the same materials, such as large, expensive windows that took a crane to hoist to the second floor and specialized training and tools to install. “Todd and a few buddies busted ’em out over a few weekends with a few six-packs. We needed ’em to see Russia.”

Republican commentators expressed their untrammeled joy at and admiration of Mrs Palin’s brilliant move, noting its similarity to the bit where Vader kills Gandalf and he then comes back to kill Voldemort. “The Palins are just staying in Paraguay for a few short months,” said Bill Kristol on Fox News, “until the financial mudslinging stops. Then she’ll be back to run for President! A resounding shot of hope has been fired!” Up to several protestors took to the streets in urban areas with signs saying “STOP WASHINGTON,” “STOP OBAMA” and “SAVE SARAH” before being returned to the Republican Preservation National Parks in Utah and Alaska.

Mrs Palin’s last words were for the mainstream liberal media. “As I leave you, I want you to know — just think how much you’re gonna be missing. You won’t have Palin to kick around any more. Because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it’ll be one in which I’ve welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you. You betcha!”

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WELL I NEVER, Do-As-You-Please, Wednesday (NotScientist) — The minister for science and innovation, Lord Paul Drayson, has praised the high standards of science journalism at the sixth World Conference of Science Journalists in London yesterday. About 900 delegates attended the conference to congratulate each other on the remarkable quality of their press release transcription skills.

“The public relies on dependable science journalism to understand the forces shaping the modern world,” said Lord Drayson. “Your work covering the things that really matter, such as pseudo-evolutionary explanations of current fashion trends, what will give us cancer this week, scaring the crap out of people over the MMR vaccine so their kids die of birth defects from measles instead and why fellatio is required for female health helps people make important choices about their lives and builds a vital gap between scientists and the public. I mean bridge.”

He dismissed claims that typical science reporting primarily results in sensationalist and misleading headlines. “I wish more journalists would follow your example. The ones covering MPs’ expenses certainly should have been working the way you do.”

The speech was delivered to a backdrop of A-level students in lab coats. And bikinis.

Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro calculated that Lord Drayson’s speech could power all of Britain for six months purely from harnessing the steam coming out of Ben Goldacre’s ears.

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REAL VIRTUALITY, Seattle, Thursday 2099 (NNN) — Microsoft Corporation has announced a limited one-off extension of availability of its Windows XP operating system to April 2101 after criticism from large customers and analysts. This is the fifty-sixth extension of XP’s availability since 2008.

Through successive releases of Microsoft’s flagship Windows operating system, demand for XP has remained an important factor for businesses relying on stable XP-specific software and installations, who have pushed back strongly against the software company’s attempts to move them to later versions. Windows administration skills have become rare in recent years and consultants have demanded high fees. Reviving Windows administrators from cryogenic freezing has proven insufficient to fill the market gap, as almost all begged to work on COBOL instead.

“Windows XP is currently in the extremely very prolonged super-extended support phase and Microsoft encourages customers to migrate to Windows for Neurons 2097 as soon as feasible,” said William Gates V, CEO and great-grandson of the company founder. “Spare change?”

Microsoft Corporation, along with Monsanto Corporation and the RIAA, exists as a protected species in the Seattle Memorial Glass Crater Bad Ideas And Warnings To The Future National Park in north-west Washington on the radioactive remains of what was once the planet Earth, under the protection of our Linux-based superintelligent robot artificial intelligence overlords. Company revenues for 2098 were over $15.

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