News of the News

I’M A BLIGHT ON HUMANITY, Get Me Out Of Here, Saturday (NNGadget) — It’s August, the best of times when you’re a space-filler generator in IT journalism, as every other media outlet turns into a gaping void at least as bad as ourselves. This leads to the inevitable debate: which is the best operating system, Windows 7 or Snow Leopard?

Operating system name: Windows 7 gets lots of page hits and comments from individual Microsoft fans who, it’s true, just happen to be employed by Microsoft’s PR company, but are completely independent in their thinking. Snow Leopard attracts Apple cultists, freshly charged from reading a novel-length apologia at RoughlyDrafted and all set to refute perceived calumnies and smite the unbeliever. Either is great for the ad banner exposure. Tie.

Upgrading: Windows 7 has an insanely complicated upgrade graph, whereas Snow Leopard’s is: “put the disk in the computer.” The former is way better for extended articles on how it’s even easier to do a complicated Windows upgrade process by hand than it was going from XP to Vista and saves us lots of work thinking of things to write. Apple just fail to provide us material. Advantage: Windows 7.

Presentation: Windows 7 has the thoroughly reworked taskbar and the beautiful fonts and polish of Vista. Mac OS X has minor variations on the same interface it’s had for eight years. Windows 7 looks just way more exciting in screenshots in tech press articles. Advantage: Windows 7.

Improvements: Microsoft made Windows 7 as backwards-compatible with Vista as possible, down to application performance and memory usage. They did dazzling things with the presentation of all this functionality, putting everything you use every day into exciting new places, with helpful new names. Apple, on the other hand, focused largely on internal plumbing and security. It’s just dull, boys. How are we supposed to puff this up? C’mon, meet us half way here. Advantage: Windows 7.

Price: The Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade is $120 on Amazon, whereas Snow Leopard is $29. Apple just aren’t putting enough value on their products. Do you want people thinking it’s just cheap garbage? Advantage: Windows 7.

Enterprise readiness: No-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft. If you get a Mac, however, your co-workers will conspire against you and probably steal it. With Windows 7, you can be sure no-one else will ever want to touch your computer. Advantage: Windows 7.

System configuration: Microsoft gave me this laptop with only eight CPU cores and 16 gigabytes of memory to show just how good Windows 7 was on such low-end hardware. We had to buy a Mac to do this test on, because Apple just didn’t understand the promotional advantages of giving me a shiny new 17″ MacBook just because I wanted one. So I got a second-hand Mac Mini for a fair comparison. It’s clear that Microsoft understand the needs of modern information technology journalism perfectly. They also sent over their PR people Candy, Brandi and Bimbi to help me with my Windows setup all last night. Apple just completely don’t get it. Advantage: Windows 7.

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PAGE 3, Channel 5, August (NNN) — Men prefer websites designed by men, women prefer those designed by women and designers prefer those designed by designers, according to a new study by Gloria Moss, a lecturer in Press-Release Science at Bucks New University.

“It’s August, so the differences spring from our … caveman ancestors!” said Professor Moss. Men’s eyes are slightly further apart than women’s, giving them better stereoscopic vision for ogling large breasts. Men prefer to design and use websites with straight lines, unfussy detail, regular typography and tits. “Digs in Lascaux in the south of France show the original version of nuts.co.uk, which was painted on the walls of the cave.”

Women prefer websites about cooking, cleaning, housework, submissive workplace behaviour and gossip, particularly the sort in free newspapers you glance at on the train. Pink flowery decorations are also favoured. Also, they need to show more cleavage in the workplace and waggle it around at after-work drinks to get ahead in their careers.

Designers write blog rants about typefaces and kerning, under the delusion that anyone gives a shit. “Everyone else uses Comic Sans specifically to piss them off. Wind ’em up and watch ’em go!” They also spend inordinate amounts of time trying to put in penis logos to amuse their mates on b3ta.

Professor Moss’s research is to be published in the Journal of Metro in September. “Free newspapers count as publication credits these days. Had you even heard of Bucks New University before this article? Me neither.”

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VICTORIA, Steampunk Britain, Thursday (NNN) — A “wall of steel” Microsoft rocket attack on Google’s London office yesterday caused a small fire from a ruptured gas cylinder, a reminder of the browser and search engine wars and Microsoft’s overwhelming might.

The six-story-tall Microsoft mecha, approaching from the direction of Victoria Station, unleashed an all-out barrage, belching amusing farts of smoke from its Zune HD assault flamethrowers, before halting with an E74 error and collapsing onto the top of the building, where Google employees were enjoying their regular Thursday afternoon barbecue roasting a Snow Leopard on a spit.

Four fire engines and twenty firefighters in hazmat suits were sent out after reports of Vista fumes in the area.

The attack came a day after a Microsoft suicide car bomber killed seven cockroaches and gave himself a papercut when his car computer bluescreened. Microsoft disclaimed responsibility, asserting it was a completely independent suicide commando who only coincidentally happened to be in the pay of their PR agency.

The BBC has reported Microsoft’s complete victory in the battle, with extensive Zune downloads in Silverlight format of the victorious Seattle Revolutionary Army in action.

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THE MEMORY HOLE, Wolverhampton South West, Thursday (NNN) — Labour has criticised Tory MEP Daniel Hannan for citing Adolf Hitler in an interview.

Mr Hannan told Randroid magazine that the 1930s German chancellor understood “the importance of a really good motorway.” He later told the BBC he was a “libertarian” on immigration, but was fully on-side with Mr Hitler over the right grade of asphalt and suitably wide turning circles at interchanges. “His expertise in these matters really isn’t appreciated these days.”

The MEP caused controversy two weeks ago when he gave a stirring speech on US television saying that the NHS would lead to “rivers of blood” — prompting Tory leader David Cameron to ask the media to “pay no attention to the silly, silly man behind the curtain” and gently remind Mr Hannan that getting elected next year would be quite nice, thanks.

Mr Hannan also became a hit on the video sharing site YouTube, with a three minute speech in the European Parliament attacking Gordon Brown, that was set to a clip from the movie Downfall and had “Dragostea Din Tei” as backing music.

The Conservatives said Mr Hannan would not be disciplined because his praise for Mr Hitler had not referred to the late politician’s stance on immigration. “He does have some quite eccentric views about some things,” said Mr Cameron. “Ha! Ha! There’s a reason we sent him off to Europe, where he couldn’t do much harm. Daniel, do feel free not to comment in public on anything whatsoever until next June, there’s a good chap.”

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NO MICROSOFT WAY, WebTV Centre,Wednesday (MSBBC) — Microsoft has unveiled new technology that will allow the BBC to completely outsource its technology news section to Microsoft.

This cements an informal relationship that has been in place since BBC News slimmed down surplus staff such as subeditors, proofreaders or most of the journalists. “Tech news is a brutally competitive area,” said Ashley Highfield of Microsoft, formerly of the BBC. “It’s a race against time to be first with the rewrite of the press release. I must point out, by the way, that my current job is in no way related to the Microsoft-based technology I put in place when I worked for the BBC.”

The new technology will automatically pull in Microsoft press releases, add grammatical errors, talk down to the reader, substitute technical terms with inaccurate synonyms and then misspell them and put them in quotation marks. Articles will be padded with analyst quotes computer-generated by an expert system describing how Google will destroy rainforests and Apple phones cost too much.

Recent output includes articles on Microsoft’s Zune, Microsoft’s collaboration with Nokia, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s copy of the Nintendo Wii controller, Microsoft suing Windows pirates in China, long articles on Bill Gates’ charitable foundation and medical evidence that Google causes cancer.

The system is guaranteed robust. “In fact, we’re running it on a refurbished Xbox,” said Highfield. “Absolutely nothing can go wr E74 ◉ ◉ ◉

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PAGE 3, Channel 5, Friday (Mediocre Grauniad) — The collapse of Murdoch evening freesheet The London Paper has thrown the vapid fishwrap industry into turmoil.

News Group Newspapers had already been reeling under the impact of even a 20p Sun only being bought by people too thick even for Metro. “Celebrities!” said London Paper editor Stefano Hatfield. “Train strikes! Viagra ice cream at Selfridges! Half-naked black women as well as white ones! Science from the University of That’s A Bit Bloody Convenient! Politely-phrased middle-class suburban fascism, none of your unsubtle Daily Mail-isms! Not even the Em cartoon was enough! What did we miss?”

The paper will be much-missed by the Lumber Cartel and the binmen division of Unite. The London Paper single-handedly made up a quarter of all the rubbish in the streets of Westminster and low-cost housing was under construction using remaindered copies of City Boy.

The London Paper could move behind the News Group paywall. “It works for the Wall Street Journal! There’s got to be a fantastic market for bad fashion, annoying non-celebrities, tedious City non-gossip, gay dating non-tips and indisputable scientific proof from cosmic ray measurements that women need to drink like fish and bathe in semen to grow and uplift their breasts and succeed in business. ‘Down-load’ it to your iTouch Kindle 360 today!”

“You’ll never go broke underestimating public taste,” said Rupert Murdoch, fresh from the triumpant news that MySpace had lost $500 million in value since he bought it. “Well, usually.”

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ONE INFINITE LOOP, Here We Go Again, Sunday (NNGadget) — Apple is reportedly close to launching its long-rumored ____. It could be Apple’s latest billion-dollar jackpot.

Analyst speculation says the ___ will be launched in September and be in the shops by Christmas. A new mention of the ___ crops up on Twitter around every eight minutes.

The ___ is rumoured to be any size and scale between the iPod Shuffle and the Macintosh IIfx. Some have described the ___ as a “___-killer.” Analyst speculation suggests the ___ will use a fantastic new interface. “It will be a whole new paradigm,” said Apple blogger Leander Kahney.

Expectations flared when technology research analysts noted that Taiwanese suppliers had received orders from an unknown buyer for a particular obscure component to be filled by the end of the year. “The only possible conclusion is that Apple will launch a ___ by early next year,” said Kahney. “They’ve been working on the ___ for the past six years. People expect it to be the ultimate Apple surprise. This thing will knock people’s socks off.”

Apple has refused to comment on the ___ speculation. But Tim Cook, its chief operating officer, recently hinted that the company was working on something “very innovative.” Steve Jobs is thought to have been personally involved in the development of the ___ over the past two years.

Daniel Eran Dilger noted on roughlydrafted.com that the ___ would need to be fueled on pain, angst, the destruction of the ecology, the torture of kittens and the tears of widows and orphans, but put together a devastatingly convincing and very lengthy explanation as to why Apple’s actions were the only humanly acceptable option for the consumer, the technology industry and the future of humanity, and that Jobs’ Nobel Peace Prize was ridiculously overdue. And that all problems were clearly Microsoft’s fault.

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THE BLACK HOLE OF LOCKERBIE, The Great Game, Saturday (NNN) — FBI Director Robert Mueller harshly criticized the release of Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, as “a mockery of the rule of law” and “detrimental to the cause of justice engineering.”

Al Megrahi had been serving a life sentence for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. After many years of appeals over blatantly tampered evidence, in which the British government tried to keep relevant documents secret from the defendant and his lawyers on national security grounds until the judge threatened to throw the conviction out, Al Megrahi was finally released due to terminal prostate cancer and having three months to live.

Al Megrahi was told he could either go home to Libya or stay and die clearing his name. The government declined an option to free al Megrahi and allow him to live in Scotland after senior police officers cited the severe security implications of him opening his mouth where people might listen.

“Obviously, the sight of a mass murderer getting a hero’s welcome in Tripoli is deeply upsetting, deeply distressing,” David Miliband told BBC radio Friday morning. “Since of course he did it, as shown by none of his appeals getting through.”

The Libyan government had accepted that paying $2.7 billion and taking the rap for the bombing was a business requirement of selling oil to the West. But Thursday, after al Megrahi’s return, the Libyan official news agency JANA issued a statement from the government saying that al Megrahi had been “a political hostage,” showing that Gadaffi was obviously a terrorist nutter and a bad loser to boot.

Peter Mandelson pooh-poohed the notion that the release was in any way to sweeten upcoming oil deals. “The idea that the British government and the Libyans would sit down and somehow barter about the freedom of this Libyan prisoner to form some sort of business deal … it’s not only wrong, it’s completely implausible. Furthermore, any such deals in the very near future will be merest coincidence.”

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RACTER, Eliza Alice, Friday (MX Doctor) — Online talking treatment using instant messaging can help NHS budgets recover from depression, say management researchers.

The study looked at 297 people with anxiety and depression. Half had up to 10 one-hour sessions with an online therapist, LOLbot. The other half were sent to sit in a GP’s waiting room for two hours, made fun of by the receptionist and then sent home again. The study showed that LOLbot was significantly cheaper and made the local NHS trust’s accountant far more cheerful and gave him a greater sense of well-being.

“It’s like being in a chat room with your therapist,” said Dr David Kessler of the University of Bristol.

 I can’t talk to people. Even on the phone. Can you help me?
 MY NAME IS DR LOLBOT. HOW CAN I HELP YOU?
 You can help me look at my life and what it’s like … and what I decide to do about it.
 HOW YOU CAN HELP I MORE LIKE EVEN DECIDE?
 You’re not making sense. Life is futile. I can’t decide what to do. I’m not sure I should go this far.
 HAS ANYONE REALLY BEEN FAR EVEN AS DECIDED TO USE EVEN GO WANT TO DO LOOK MORE LIKE?
 What?
 SORRY, I ACCIDENTALLY THE WHOLE ANSWER. PUT SHOE ON HEAD
 This is NOT helping me. Are you actually a doctor?
 OH GOD HOW DID THIS GET IN HERE I AM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTERS
 That’s okay, I’m not either. But I can’t face it. I want to end it all.
 THAT’S NOT FUNNY. MY BROTHER DIED THAT WAY
 I’m sorry. The world is doomed. The universe will burn out … Dr LOLbot, how do we reverse entropy?
 I DUNNO LOL
 I can’t cope with this any more. I’m going to kill myself now. Goodbye, Dr LOLbot.
 IT’S OVER 9000!
 …
 FAG.

“The study was published by Elsevier and funded by BUPA,” said health patsy Andy Burnham, “so this is top-notch science you can absolutely rely on. Another cigar?”

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GORDON OF THE JUNGLE, Watch Out For That Tree, Monday (NNN) — After a report by the Civitas think tank that “A-levels could be done by a monkey these days,” British students have been hiring monkeys to do their homework for them while they engage in healthy outdoor activities and social interaction, usually involving White Lightning and happy slapping.

Popular students used to outsource their homework to the class nerds, but “the monkeys smell better and have better social skills. And don’t tell us to run Linux. They also hurl their poo accurately, not cackhandedly.”

A survey of sixth-form teachers confirmed the change. “The monkeys pay more attention,” said one, “have better handwriting, understand human speech better and don’t play tinny synthetic R&B on their phones in class. They prefer the theme from 2001.”

Online homework outsourcing monkey Anastasia de Waal, who consults at monkeybrains.co.uk, said the problem was overstated. “The money flows from those who can’t do the work to those who can. The students are happy, the monkeys are happy, the exam boards are happy, our takeover of the earth from the inferior human race proceeds to plan, Civitas can just bog off. Look, it’s all in this A-level Economics report I prepared. A snip at twenty-five bananas. Organic fairtrade only, please.”

Newspapers were horrified at the report, saying monkeys wouldn’t look good enough in bikinis for the annual A-level student photos.

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WHITEHOUSE, Your Happy Place, Wednesday (NNN) — Japanese horror film Grotesque has been refused an 18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) because of its graphic torture scenes.

BBFC director David Cooke said it presented “little more than an unrelenting and escalating scenario of humiliation, brutality and sadism. And no, that’s not a marketing feature.”

The plot is minimal. Two censors are snatched off the street and wake up shackled in a basement. With no explanation, a sadistic Internet degrades, tortures and mutilates them. The film features graphic dismemberment, extreme anal dilation, two girls and one cup. Special effects are apparently by Barbra Streisand.

The refusal of classification means it is illegal to sell or even distribute the film in the UK at all. “This will completely protect the UK from this filth, as people will certainly not ship in a DVD from Japan or get friends in other countries to burn a copy. Nor will they BitTorrent it just because it’s in the news and treasure their download of this odious lump of grot they’d have paid no attention to whatsoever except for us — oh, my promotional fee? Thank you! — and horror fans won’t swap it amongst themselves as if it’s precious. By the way, we’re in discussions with the Internet Watch Foundation about how to keep the BBFC relevant and well-loved in the twenty-first century world of Steampunk Britain.”

The BBFC has drawn criticism for allowing films such as the Danish horror Antichrist and the American “torture porn” films Saw and Passion of the Christ to be distributed in Britain. “But this is, after all, Japanese. I think I speak for all Britons when I say: Dear Japanese people, please — just stop it. Love, British people.”

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GAMESCOM, Ichiyaga Camp, Tuesday (NNGadget) — Sony is releasing the new PlayStation 3 Slim across Europe in early September, the company hoping that anyone will remember the PS3 still exists.

The new light-weight version is two-thirds of the size and weight, only requiring a single, much smaller, extra room built onto your house, fitted with 13-amp 405-volt three-phase power. The new, more compact enriched uranium fuel rods are not supplied.

PlayStation chief Kazuo Hirai made the announcement at the GamesCom conference in Cologne, in a move widely seen as an attempt to regain momentum in the battle against rival Microsoft and put off having to ritually disembowel himself with a sword. “Our competition is absolutely the XBox 360. That’s the one to beat! Thank God they didn’t build hardware that worked, we’d have real trouble if they had.”

The PS3 has struggled thanks to its high price and lack of games, not to mention competition from the Nintendo Wii, which, apart from costing half as much, is actually fun. The Sony console did, however, have spectacular launches in Japan and America, with tens of fans queuing through the night to get their hands on the console, particularly with their Sony employee discount. The machines sold at only half the price on eBay soon after.

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WIKIALITY, The Tenderloin, Saturday (NNN) — The online encyclopedia, knowledge base, social networking site, essay repository, blog, search engine, news aggregator, dessert wax and floor topping Wikipedia has reached its three millionth article and ceased all editing.

Palo Alto Research Center reported that only 1% of edits by random users were kept. “They were all unspeakable shit,” said burnt-out administrator WikiFiddler451. “All of them. No, I’m not exaggerating. Go to Special:Newpages and read a day’s entries some time. You’ll start by deleting the whole database, before you get onto plotting the doom of humanity. Christ, why go on?”

Recent media coverage has highlighted the “inclusionist/deletionist” wars of 2005, including enquiries from Endemol looking for a “passionate deletionist” to join Big Brother 11, “preferably one with big tits.” It is thought that Wikipedia could have had ten million articles by now had they not viciously abused their editorial powers by deleting your valuable contributions about you, your teacher at school, your garage band or your dog or the many cameraphone pictures you uploaded of your penis.

“Everything’s already been written,” said WikiFiddler451, burning the last of his Star Wars figurines before leaving for his rehabilitation course in social interaction skills and basics of hygiene. “Do you have any idea how big THREE MILLION articles is? A BILLION GODDAMN WORDS! Are you going to read more than a droplet of that in your life? No you aren’t. You’re following your goddamn Twitter.

“But hey, only two million articles are The Simpsons in popular culture or Doctor Who in popular culture. No-one actually reads this stuff, they just write it. We have LiveJournal for stuff people write that no-one wants to read. ‘Oh, I wandered lonely as a cheeseburger/ My passionate angst filling my Coke with darkness.’ Or Knol. KNOL! I’ll just Bing that one.”

Shell-shocked veterans of Wikipedia are at a loss now that it’s all over — wandering the alleyways of the Internet, mumbling to themselves about “ANI” and “we had to delete the village in order to save it,” threatening the policemen moving them on with “arbitration” and bursting into tears when the policeman answers “citation needed.” Mere children, sent into the culture wars to save knowledge from horrors they barely understood, and coming home as crippled wrecks. No victory parades for these brave men and women. There is only so much Citizendium, Uncyclopedia and 4chan can do for these child heroes. With your help, we can build Potemkin wikis for these honorable veterans, where they can safely ban and unban, revert and edit-war, and correct the naming of Danzig Gdansk Danzig Gdansk without the possibility of damage to actual human readers. Please donate so that they may never bug you again.

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YOUR FRIENDS LIST, DeadJournal, Friday (NNN) — The dangers of stalkers destroying the lives of the extremely stupid on social networking sites,when you should just stay quiet and watch television, was highlighted again this week after a woman called Lindsay was sacked for posting “OMG I HATE MY JOB. My boss is a total pervvy wanker always making me do shit stuff just to piss me off!!” where her boss could read it and fire her by comment.

Office workers get interrupted on the job as often as eleven times per hour, costing as much as $588 billion squillion zillion in paid time lost to “work” each year from valuable peer-to-peer creative cultural participation in the fulfilment of the promise of the computer-mediated throbbing flow of twenty-first century participation in society in such flourishing hotbeds of unlimited human potential as “What femninine hygeine prodcut are yuo?” quizzes on Facebook and photos of bowel movements on Twitter.

Studies have found that workers interrupted by e-mail and telephones scored lower on an IQ test than a test group that had smoked marijuana. Unfortunately, EPA regulations still forbid bong hits at one’s desk, even when trying to fix one’s makefile.

“There are reasonable precautions the non-stupid can take,” said labour lawyer Mary Beth Currie. “A secondary Facebook profile with only workmates as friends and a cardboard cutout as the photo. This is useful when putting the cardboard cutout at one’s desk before going off to the loo to look at porn on your iPhone. Of course, if you’re my minion and don’t add me to your main account, I fire you.”

Lindsay was upset, but unrepentant. “Thank fuck for Facebook. What the hell did people do at work all day before computers?”

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THE INDIFFERENCE ENGINE, Steampunk Britain, Sunday (NNN) — Seven million Britons face having their internet connection cut off and fines of up to £50,000 as Digital Britain is implemented.

Lord Carter, the report’s author, has now left the Government for consultancies unknown. Lord Mandelson, who has taken over responsibility for digital policy, has been persuaded of the need for a tougher approach after entreaties from starving music mogul David Geffen, who was introduced to him by the Rothschild family. “He warned me in 2001 that these ‘MP3 players’ would lead to the downfall of civilisation. I understand iPods were popular in the City just before the Great Recession, you know.”

Internet piracy is estimated by the movie and music industries to cost them around £1.4 million billion squillion a year, ripped untimely from their generous artist-supporting pockets.

Critics have compared the proposals to King Canute, failing to turn back the tide. “So it’s up to the Government to supply the sandbags. We have an industry to defend!”

Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, will require Internet providers to record users downloading illegal content. The magical copyright detector, which the music industry just knows the ISPs are being obstructive in not enabling immediately, will be used to send a massive voltage up through serious repeat offenders’ Internet connections and into their chairs.

Labour backbencher Tom Watson said the sanctions would attach an “unbearable burden” on an emerging technology with the power to transform society. “Sounds just fine to me,” said Lord Mandelson.

Kerry McCarthy, Labour MP for Bristol East, will be in charge of the party’s Internet campaigning ahead of the general election. “Voters will increasingly be searching the web to find out what we think about the issues. If we haven’t cut them off.”

In other news, membership of the Pirate Party UK, launched earlier in the week, has been increasing at 100 new members per hour.

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WEB 1.99 RC 1, Cyberspice, Thursday (NNGadget) — Only 98% of Twitter updates are “pointless babble,” says a new report that studied 2,000 tweets over a period of two weeks.

The top category was “pointless babble” tweets, with nearly 98% of tweets being inanity no sane person could want to read, retweets of inanity, links to inanity, retweets of links to inanity and retweets of retweets of links to links to the reretweet itself. And camera phone pictures of bowel movements on Twitpic.

Almost 2% was Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman or retweets thereof. Most of the rest was Warren Ellis posting scatological abuse of his fans.

Botnet command messages were becoming more popular, many disguised as combinations of the syllables “lol” “wtf” “d00d” “RT” and “#fb” or scatological abuse of Warren Ellis’s fans.

Twitter’s demographics as of June 2009 were 55% female, 43% ages 18 to 34, 78% white, and 99.5% of such short attention spans that Facebook might as well be War and Peace. Botnet readership was considered likely to rise as soon nothing with organic intelligence would be able to cope.

Twitter recently redesigned its homepage, changing the tag “What are you doing now?” to “Post tomorrow’s CNN headlines, particularly about #goatse.”

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REEPERBAHN, Helmand, Friday (NNN) — Afghanistan has passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, to the embarrassed silence of the international community and its fighting forces.

Activists say the law contradicts the Afghan constitution and international treaties the country has signed. “But I’m sure we can deal with that in due course,” said Afghan president Hamid Karzai, “particularly once the fundies have gotten the votes in. There’s one of those ‘election’ things you people are so fond of coming up, you know.”

Proposed amendments include having to ask nicely and not slapping a bitch too hard afterwards. Non-marital rapists will be required to pay “blood money” to girls injured during a rape, before the girl is of course stoned to death as an adulterer.

General Sir David Richards noted that British military involvement in the country may last decades. “This is what our boys are dying for. Half a century of legal rape is a small price to pay for truth and justice for all men.”

The US and Britain invaded Afghanistan to deal with the Taliban and “bomb them back to the stone age. But it looks like they’re already there, which saves us some time.”

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BOULEVARDE OF BROKEN DREAMS, Los Angeles, Wednesday (N! News) — Disney will film a new version of The Diary of Anne Frank, to be written, directed and co-produced by David Mamet.

Mamet will use the famed diary to tell the story of the young Jewish girl who hid with her family from the Nazis in the an attic in Amsterdam. “Love the story, love the themes, love everything about it, baybee, I spent a year getting the rights!” he said. “Don’t wanna change a thing! I’ve got my own original take on the material, of course. I’m going to re-frame the story as a young girl’s rite of passage. You know, from living to dead. Though the ‘dead’ bit is up in the air at this stage.”

Disney execs have granted Mamet complete artistic freedom, with only passing executive suggestions of Jean-Claude Van Damme as the SS officer who steals Frank’s heart and the voice of Jerry Seinfeld as her mouse companion, animated by the Pixar division. An additional scene includes Frank leaping a CGI shark.

“It’s gonna be the greatest thing seen on the Hollywood screen,” said Mamet. “I promise you’ll see every penny of the FX spend right there in fronna ya. When Dr Manhattan destroys Berlin … no, I don’t wanna give anything away on the record. Your people can do lunch with my people and we can discuss it then. Sequel’s already greenlighted! Love ya, baybee!”

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RATCHED, Massachusetts, Tuesday (NNN) — President Barack Obama has asked Americans not to believe “rumors” that his health reform initiatives will lead to a government-run health care system, push Medicare recipients to die rather than run up their bill or lead to widespread euthanasia of the Republican “base.”

“Let me start by dispelling the outlandish rumors that reform will promote euthanasia, or cut Medicaid, or bring about a government takeover,” said Mr Obama. “That’s simply not true. Furthermore, our proposed tests would still rule Sarah Palin as being human and actually alive, despite the evidence from the brain machines.”

Sarah Palin has spoken in horror of the centralised “death boards” she says Obama wishes to introduce, instead of the ones that individual hospitals run now to send people home to die when their money runs out. “Scientists like Stephen Hawking would have been killed off by the National Health Service,” she said, “if they’d grown up in Eng-er-land!”

Peter Ferrara from Fox News refused to buy Mr Obama’s claims. “The Obama health plan is based on evidence — but evidence leads to science, and science leads to Darwinian evolution being applied to you and yours! He’ll raise health costs, make freedom of choice illegal, ration health care and build a machine feeding illegal aliens in luxury on the corpses of aborted Republican babies, sacrificed in a gay Muslim Kenyan ceremony. You can buy my book on it at heartland.org for just $19.99. Call now! Operators standing by!”

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BRITAIN’S GOT CHRONIC AMBITION, Minus Talent, Tuesday (N! News) — Second-string actress, second-string pop singer, second-string X Factor judge and sister of someone famous for actual star quality Dannii Minogue claims she has stopped using Botox, the wrinkle-beating injection that paralyses and relaxes facial muscles.

Her decision comes after public criticism for her alleged lack of facial expression on the X Factor, hence insufficient visible disgust with Simon Cowell.

Ms Minogue revealed in an interview that she is now ready for a more natural look. “Thor os so moch prossure on womon,” she told Aging Bimbo magazine. “Off you con bo hoppy woth yoursolf, thot’s tho morn thong.”

Her facial muscles will be operated using wires hooked to the same mains connection that powers the rest of her body. “Tho orms, tho logs, tho loght-op solocone brosts woth MP3 ployor. Ot’s oll good.”

Ms Minogue says almost everyone she knows has had Botox. “Oxcopt Choryl Cole. Sho’s not smort onough to work hor foce onywoy.”

She dismisses the notion that Botox use is somehow unusual. “To moy, Botox os no more onosoal thon toothposte. Thot’s whoy O tolk loke thos.”

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